The Jasmine Wife: A sweeping epic historical romance novel for women
Jane Coverdale
A gripping and stunning historical romance set in the British Raj for fans of Dinah Jefferies and global bestseller Lucinda Riley At midnight where the jasmine blooms, a woman waits for her lover… Sara Archer’s future as the dutiful wife of a British official in India seems assured, until a chance meeting with the gorgeous and powerful Ravi Sabran changes everything. Under the heat of the Indian sun, the veneer of polite society wears off quickly and soon Sara realises that nothing is as it appears to be, especially her husband Charles… But in the beautiful jasmine gardens of the Maharajah’s palace, Sara follows a forbidden path… away from her bullying husband, towards Ravi and the long-buried secrets of her own birth.
The Jasmine Wife
JANE COVERDALE
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HarperImpulse
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Copyright © Jane Coverdale 2019
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Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Jane Coverdale asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008336301
Ebook Edition © June 2019 ISBN: 9780008336295
Version: 2019-06-04
Table of Contents
Cover (#ua31e32f0-c6d5-5818-b031-e7a0be2a8f27)
Title Page (#u9d4a21f9-84c8-5c0f-9193-3bee3e1834ef)
Copyright (#ud0a990d3-d04f-52f8-8951-ffa50bed745d)
Dedication (#u66979c70-82fc-5f1f-b81c-eaa584c86578)
Chapter 1 (#uf614f3a9-cd27-59dd-a364-a721c5b85771)
Chapter 2 (#ue6743132-fb9e-5497-a891-4a2101ad1678)
Chapter 3 (#u13931a56-fab1-5530-add9-ecfd6f831fd4)
Chapter 4 (#u6d426b80-6538-56a4-b454-ceeb668a38a4)
Chapter 5 (#uee06e32b-a39f-52e2-b86e-bfb43775046d)
Chapter 6 (#u959f8cf0-4f20-5bfb-a132-f5709d81141c)
Chapter 7 (#u76952666-f3da-50d0-b392-7a43ae3f05d7)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About HarperImpulse (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
For my family
Chapter 1 (#ulink_0df7dc29-d099-5c1b-bb0c-34468b891128)
Sara could hardly believe they were there at last. She had been on deck since dawn, not being able to endure the agony of waiting any longer.
At first she was unmoved by her earliest glimpse of India, except for a deep sense of relief at having survived the journey, and the curious feeling of being inside a picture book.
She stood transfixed, as parched of life as a dried flower pressed between the pages, till, all at once the breeze shifted, and carried towards her the elusive tang of the distant shore.
Her past returned with an almost magical clarity, and memories, long forgotten, crept out of the shadows to taunt and provoke her.
She remembered the sickly-sweet smell of flowers turning brown in the sun, trampled offerings, scattered and rotting on the steps of forbidding temples dedicated to fantastic and unlikely gods. The stench of open drains fused with the heady and seductive scents of sandalwood and patchouli. Patchouli! She mouthed the word almost with reverence as she breathed in a hint of the musky, ancient fragrance. There was no other perfume that spoke the essence of India with as much power. She could almost feel the touch of a thin dry hand, grasping her own, as she followed behind the hurrying figure, tottering along on her little legs, her starched muslin skirts rustling through laneways crowded with stalls and people, her eyes fixed on the bright sari as it swayed ahead of her. Her mouth watered with the memory of forgotten tastes. Mango, thick, creamy yoghurt and freshly ground nutmeg, sweet sticky rice on a banana leaf, a dish made as a special treat by her ayah, Malika.
Sara hadn’t thought about Malika for years; now all at once she was flooded with sensations threatening to unbalance her, and unravel her tightly held self-control.
Malika! Sara strained to remember her face but could recall nothing of her features, only her cool touch, deft and reassuring, her fine wrists and arms encircled with a hundred shivering and tinkling bangles, and when she walked a cloud of patchouli followed in her wake.
Malika! Who had slept at the foot of her bed, and had wailed inconsolably in her grief when she had been taken away, tearing at her thick black hair and rubbing the oil from it onto Sara’s bright curls, as though giving something of herself: a talisman, to protect her.
Sara reached for her handkerchief but could not stop the tears. All those years in England and she hadn’t cried. But the tears came fast now, choking her with deep silent sobs. Soon they subsided into a sniffle and then, with a flush of shame, she remembered where she was. She looked around and was relieved no one had seen her outburst except a dusty seagull with one leg taking a rest on the ship’s rail.
A new smell separated itself from the others, but this time Sara pressed her handkerchief, now a damp and salty rag, to her nose, though it was not possible to stifle the horror. There was the stench of death nearby.
She shaded her eyes against the rising sun and, there on the hills in the distance, she could see the skeletal outline of the Towers of Silence, tall sticks of rotting bamboo where the Parsee dead lay, on beds open to the elements and to the mercy of the scavenging birds. Against the white sky, the ragged shapes of vultures floated on the air current, too lazy and well fed to hunt for live prey.
She closed her eyes, and relived again the peculiar sensation of being inside a child’s skin and chattering to her dolls in the garden of her childhood home in Madras.
Everything there had been cool, lush and fragrant. The only sound birdsong and the soft laughter of the servants as they moved on silent feet over the marble floors of the faded mansion sheltering amongst the trees.
Within the compound of her old home, the giant figs and magnolias had hung like canopies, protecting the delicate English flowers from the burning sun. At times, even roses and lavender were coaxed into bloom and, for a moment, it was possible to imagine it was England after all.
She recalled looking up, shading her eyes against the hazy sky, distracted by the sound of fighting vultures above her head. Then, as wild as the imaginings of a nightmare, the remains of a human arm had dropped with a sickening soft thud on the ground near her feet.
They should have known it wasn’t possible to keep India out, despite the high walls surrounding the house.
Sometimes, homeless widows who had banded together for protection, or cast off wives bearing scars left by cruel husbands, came to the gates to beg for food, knowing they would never be turned away without a decent meal or a moment’s comfort from their brutal and pitiable lives. Or an emaciated holy man, exhausted from constant travel but lit with a strange inner fire that seemed to sustain him through every human trial, would beg sanctuary in the cool garden in return for blessings on the household.
Then, again, they would be reminded that, outside their ordered and tranquil oasis, there was India: the real India, desperate, hungry and passionate.
Her mother’s face rose before her, the features hazy but idealised to perfection, an image fixed forever in her mind, as no picture of her survived to tell the truth of her loveliness.
She recalled the sensation of being lifted to sit on her mother’s lap, the rustling of silk, the fleeting fragrance of Attar of Roses rising from her clothes at her every movement, her high gay laugh, childlike still, as she ran barefoot across the lawn to join her little daughter in play.
To Sara she seemed to have always been a wraith, a fairy, with no more substance to her than a dream. Her father was a stronger memory, as she wore a miniature of his likeness in a locket around her neck.
The shape of his face was like her own, the full mouth and thick chestnut hair, but more real to her than his image was the faint memory of a pleasant aroma of sandalwood and tobacco, and how he had read his newspaper to her, and encouraged her to read books well above her age. It was he who’d encouraged her to speak Hindi, and to play with the village children so she could learn their ways.
He was kind to everyone, especially the servants, and spoke to her often, even as a tiny child, on the need to remember that all humans were created equal, at least in his home. And, even from the distance of time, she could recall a hint of bitterness in his voice as he spoke those words.
It was a message that had stayed with her throughout her life, and she had clung to it, as a gift he had left her, even though she was often reprimanded by her aunt for being too familiar with the servants.
Then, without warning, there were dim shadows and pain, a blurred image of a crouching figure by her bed, forcing bitter liquid through her clenched teeth. The hallucination intensified with the sounds of strange indistinct chanting, a fierce brown face close to her own, rising and falling through the mist.
Then, later, only six years old and an orphan now, dazed and frail still, being led away from the prostrate and weeping Malika.
Then a long sea voyage to England with an unknown English nanny, who held her hand in a tight grip as she waited on the doorstep of her Aunt Maria’s home, till the door opened, and she was brought inside to be taken care of.
No one knew how painful it had been to be uprooted from everything she had loved, to be left to find her way in a cold country, in the cold house of indifferent people.
There was rarely any discussion about her dead parents or the home she had left behind. It seemed there was an unspoken decision to put the whole episode out of her mind, and all memories must die with her parents. She recalled her aunt’s words whenever she dared to broach the subject. “Your father had a wild side … somewhat like you at times …” she would say with a reproving sniff, “and it was hoped India would bring him to heel. But things went from bad to worse … We knew little of your mother, only that he said she had some Spanish blood, which would explain those eyebrows of yours, and your father was determined to have her.”
She didn’t say, ‘in spite of the objections of the family’, though it was clearly implied.
“He broke with us as you know, and the first we knew of you was a letter telling us both your parents were dead. They found you in the servants’ quarters with an Indian woman and some barbarian priest. That’s how you came to be here, and that’s all we know of the unfortunate episode.”
Even her name had been considered too pagan for this new world. She’d been christened Sarianna as an affectionate salute to the country of her birth and had known nothing else. When it was dropped in favour of Sara, “a respectable English name”, she had been too young to protest. She’d become Sara Archer, though somewhere in the back of her mind was a vague recollection of another name, a name she couldn’t remember.
It wasn’t Archer, she was certain of that, and her aunt had no intention of enlightening her.
The subject was dropped, and it was unwise to attempt to raise it again, but Sara could see she knew more than she was prepared to tell. She just wasn’t going to, and now that she’d died after her long illness the name had died with her.
The mystery of her parentage didn’t seem to matter compared to the enormity of her loss. As a child, numb with shock, she went through the motions of living; of attending boarding school; of strict rules and petty punishments; of eating lukewarm, tasteless food, and learning how to stifle any show of ill-bred passion.
It was hoped she had been well and truly immunised against the more fervent emotions, though they hadn’t been entirely successful.
Her small rebellions showed in the letters of complaint sometimes sent home to her aunt.
“Sara is at times sullen and unruly. She runs when she might walk and seems to have no interest in the feminine arts. She has also been found reading a book of a nature we find unsuitable for a girl of her years and written by a Frenchman no less! She has been duly reprimanded, and the book confiscated. Her most serious misdemeanour is of riding a horse bareback outside of the usual riding lessons. You know what irreparable damage that may do to a young girl. Perhaps even blight her chances of a respectable marriage. Need I say more …”
Sara Archer, a good plain name for a good plain girl, though with her unusual colouring and high cheekbones she should have been a beauty, but, after years of stodgy boarding school food, she was overweight and cursed with sallow, dull skin made worse by the long English winters.
Her aunt despaired of the girl’s appearance, using every remedy short of powder and rouge, though, even with the daily doses of castor oil and cream of tartar to whiten her complexion, her skin remained lacklustre and dull. Her hair though had always been admired. In a plait it was as thick as a man’s fist, and even her aunt admitted grudgingly the colour was lovely, despite being more red than brown, and too heavy to crimp successfully with curling irons.
Though the cold weather was her chief enemy to beauty, it seemed her nose was always pink and swollen, her eyes constantly watering and her body stiff and ungainly.
She felt she was almost always shivering, except for the few brief, warm luxurious moments spent in bed in the morning before hastily dressing in her icy room then rushing downstairs for breakfast, where she sat as close to the meagre fire as she could, her hands clutched around her teacup, desperately trying to warm her chilblained fingers.
Sometimes at night when she lay in bed rigid with cold, her life in India came back to her in strange little bursts of disconnected memory, flooding her with longing, and enveloping her with warmth.
In a candlelit room with dark wooden floors, she lay in a small white bed under a billowing tent of mosquito netting, while she listened, wide-eyed and sleepless, to the sounds of the night invading the room on a warm perfumed breeze.
Sometimes, she shivered at the sudden scream of a cornered animal, and the horror of the whimpering that came soon after, then an ominous lingering silence. Or, the most terrifying of all sounds, the haunting chant from a nearby temple, where the worshippers were known to practise the forbidden rites of the goddess Kali, who wore a belt of human skulls around her waist and brandished a bloody knife above a decapitated head.
She knew about Kali, all the children did, but, despite her terror, she relished the bloodthirsty image with a curious delight.
Then, a suspicious rustle in the bushes beneath her window: a bandit perhaps, come to rob the house, or a python, gliding its way across the terrace to eat one of the hens.
Though to chase away her fears, in the corner of the room came the peaceful breathing of a sleeping figure, ever present and comforting, her beloved ayah, Malika, and she would fall back to sleep at last.
Then, more happily with daylight, the screech of her pet peacock, who followed her everywhere. The feel of cool fabric on her warm face as she ran laughing through sheets of luminous silks as they hung floating from between two coconut palms; the sounds of laughter, and music; a band of musicians wearing brilliant blue turbans, the plaintive wail of a sitar, and food, always food, of every kind, aromatic and delicious, spread on a long table placed under a shady arbour, surrounded by people, their faces blurring into each other, but all of them, it seemed, were happy and caring. It felt too she was the centre of their care, and she felt safe and, most of all, loved.
A young sailor coiling a rope looked up and gave her a curious stare, bringing her back to the present. Sara straightened her spine and began to pace the deck again; the waiting had become almost unbearable. A trickle of perspiration ran from beneath her wide straw hat, down her throat and into the neck of her white muslin blouse. Her skin beneath her bodice was slippery with sweat, so she would have to keep her arms firmly pressed against her sides in fear of the dreaded stains under her armpits flooding into even wider crescents. She thought how much cooler she’d be if she hadn’t been wearing a corset, and it was tempting to throw it overboard as she had done with the huge cane bustle her aunt’s maid had packed with her luggage. It would have been more sensible to just have given the bustle away, but she’d thought as a symbol of her new freedom it deserved a much more dramatic send-off.
She’d thrown it overboard at dawn, and watched it hover for a long moment on the waves, refusing to sink, and taunting her for her mutinous behaviour, till it floated almost out of sight and sank at last.
The young sailor smiled at her now in an admiring way, then strode along the deck, his wide baggy pants flapping lightly in the breeze, his linen shirt open at the neck, and Sara thought how pleasant it would be to wear such clothes. Her own long legs were encased in cotton bloomers and hidden by the thinnest layer possible of petticoats. She gave a furious little kick of protest under her skirts, but she knew to throw away her petticoat as well would be a step too far.
She recalled her aunt’s constant refrain over the years beating into her brain like a mantra. “Whatever you do or wherever you are, do not let your standards drop for a moment. People will judge you by how you maintain your appearance. A slovenly exterior shows a slovenly will.”
Sara laughed to herself. She had already let her standards slip and was surprised by how little she cared. Clearly it was other people who seemed to mind.
The hated curling irons too were abandoned almost as soon as the ship had been out of view of the shore, and her hair had improved dramatically ever since, shining with a new life and colour now it was allowed to be as it was meant to be.
She reached up to smooth the heavy chignon held in a wide tortoiseshell comb and tucked a few loose strands under her hat. It was difficult to be neat in such weather, but she consoled herself with the thought that perhaps Charles wouldn’t notice … Men usually didn’t notice such things, but then, he was always so immaculate himself and he couldn’t abide untidiness in others.
Dear, dear Charles … Her face took on a faraway look as she cupped her face in her hands, her elbows on the rail. She hadn’t seen him for over a year, not since their hasty marriage on the day he’d left to return to India.
They had planned to have their honeymoon on board the ship, but when Sara’s aunt became gravely ill on the day of her marriage, Sara had no choice but to stay to nurse her till she died. But, even after her aunt being long buried, Charles wrote asking his bride to wait a little longer before joining him. His letters told of typhoons and outbreaks of hostilities amongst the natives, or cholera amongst his staff, then, finally, the need to wait till the end of the monsoon.
She’d decided she wouldn’t wait a moment longer, regardless of disease or bad weather, when at last, when more than a year had passed, Charles’s letter arrived and freed her from the home where she’d begun to feel she would never escape.
“You must take a passage on the Charlotte, leaving Liverpool on 22
October. My friends Lady Palmer and her daughter Cynthia will accompany you. Unfortunately, Lord Palmer must stay in England for a few months longer, which means I am in charge here … a very good sign for my career. They’ve been in Paris shopping for Cynthia’s trousseau, after having become engaged to a young man who will be in time, a Baronet.”
He was clearly impressed with Miss Palmer, and he proved it with the following lines.
“I cannot stress enough the importance of you becoming friends with them both, my future may depend on it, and the long voyage will give you that opportunity …”
Sara’s thoughts drifted back to the world she’d left behind. The solid two-storey, red brick house near Hampstead Heath, set securely amongst pleasant oaks and a garden full of snowdrops and bluebells: a safe world of middle-class respectability, where no hint of worldly passions would ever be likely to enter.
After visiting on a regular basis for some weeks, Charles had come to the house to say goodbye before returning to India, and everyone assumed he’d come to ask for her hand. When he suggested a moment alone with her in the conservatory, her aunt could barely contain her excitement and rushed forward, taking both his hands in hers in a way to show he was already a member of the family. “Of course, my dear boy,” She smirked and winked till Sara thought she would die of shame. Though even she fully expected he’d ask her to marry him then.
But it came to nothing. He took her hand and held it for a moment, then said something about how he’d miss their amusing chats, and how he’d hoped she’d find time to write to him in India.
A terrible attack of panic overtook her. He was going to leave without asking her to marry him!
She thought of India, and how much she longed to go there, so she defied convention and took matters in her own hands. She swallowed her pride and prepared to lie.
She blurted out, “I’m sorry, I won’t be able to.”
He was clearly taken aback.
“I may be married soon, and it wouldn’t be appropriate to write to a single man.”
His face showed no emotion, though he flexed his hands behind his back as he paced amongst the potted begonias.
“Do I know the fellow?”
“No, he’s someone I’ve known for a long time.” She stared at her feet so he wouldn’t see her eyes.
“I promised him my answer within the week.”
“Does this mean you’ll accept him?”
“The family is very fond of him, and so am I really …” but here she hesitated, then sighed, hoping to plant a little seed of doubt in his mind.
“But he’s a highly respectable man with a bright future … so …”
She had almost begun to believe in her fictitious fiancé herself.
Charles left the house deep in thought, and Sara was convinced she’d never see him again.
“Well?” Her aunt met her at the door, her uncle standing behind with a foolish smile on his lips.
She tried to speak but no sounds came out. Her humiliation was too great. She rushed to her bedroom, her face averted, her aunt’s bitter words following her up the stairs.
“Whatever did you do wrong this time?”
Later, when she emerged, her face red and swollen with shame, her relations scarcely bothered to hide the fact they thought she was nothing more than a liability.
She thought back to that evening’s long, silent, unendurable meal, the air thick with disapproval. Her uncle’s furious tight-lipped sawing of the roast, his resentful way of handing her the plate without looking at her, and how he gave her less meat than usual.
Now there was no escaping the endless censure and, with the departure of Charles, there was nothing and no one to look forward to, just endless days of boredom or visiting her aunt’s stuffy friends and walking the pekes. She’d developed a hatred of the poor things.
The next morning, in an attempt to recapture her lost pride, she put forward the idea of going to India by herself.
“Hundreds of girls do it.” She raised her chin and glared, even though she knew she might have gone too far. “Why should I have to wait for a husband to take me …?”
Her uncle was moved enough by her outburst to put down his newspaper in a way calculated to increase her fear of him. “So, you would join a shipload of common shopgirls, to trawl amongst the rabble of India for a husband? Simply because you can’t find one here … or won’t,” he added, referring to the time when she had refused what was seen as a perfectly good offer from a country parson with a generous living because she couldn’t bear the way he blew his nose then examined the contents of his handkerchief.
For almost a week she was hardly spoken to; the outrage was too deep.
It was while she sat, frozen with humiliation, staring down at her untouched breakfast, that the maid had entered and announced Mr Charles Fitzroy was waiting in the library.
“Perhaps he forgot his hat?” her uncle remarked cattily as she flew out of the room. In the hallway she took a moment to tidy her hair and compose her face into what she thought was an expression of pleasant unconcern before she opened the door to face him once more. Even so, her voice came out husky and cracked. “Mr Fitzroy? I didn’t expect to see you again.”
He was standing by the window staring out at the garden, still covered in a thin layer of morning frost, then, with what seemed an enormous effort of will, he turned to face her.
“I’ve been thinking …” He took a deep breath and swallowed hard, unable to look at her while rolling his hat around in his hands. “Look, I can’t accept you’ll marry this other fellow. I had it in mind that you might marry me.”
She held onto the back of a chair for support. “You didn’t mention this before,” she answered at last, her voice shaking.
“It didn’t seem fair to ask you to give up your life here, but it seems if I wait any longer you are lost to me. Though if you love this other fellow …”
“No, I don’t love him,” she managed to blurt out, “I never have. I was going to refuse him.”
He took a step closer. “Are you going to refuse me?”
She had just enough self-control to pause for a respectable time before answering, then to allow him to take her in his arms and clumsily brush their lips together.
Then the relief, the blessed relief, to be able to announce she’d received a proposal of marriage from Charles Fitzroy, and that she’d accepted him.
It was decided to arrange a special licence so they could be married almost at once, then sail for India together on the same day of the marriage, therefore saving the cost of a honeymoon.
Later, when the first throes of excitement had died down, Sara examined her reasons for accepting him. She was fairly sure she loved him, of course, although it had taken her some time to realise it. He’d been lured to the house by her ever-hopeful aunt, as had many other young men before him, and placed as an offering at her feet. Knowing she was expected to encourage him, she’d felt a stubborn resentment, telling herself he was no different from all the others.
Then, while they’d been playing tennis in the garden and he’d paused to take a breath, he was, without warning, suddenly illuminated. He stood with his shoulders back, his chest heaving from the pace of play, one hand on his hip and the other holding his racquet nobly by his side in the attitude of a Greek god. In the soft afternoon light, with the sun shining on his bright blond hair, he appeared almost unbearably heroic.
For a few moments it was as though the world had stopped spinning, and she remembered the flash of realisation.
I love him! I’m in love!
With that insight everything changed, and she couldn’t be easy around him any more. Just brushing her hand by accident on his caused such an intense mingling of pleasure and fear, she felt sure he must know. Even her laughter became forced and unnatural, and she couldn’t look into his eyes without blushing and turning away.
He was different to the other men in her narrow circle.
He was on leave from India for only a few weeks and brought with him into the stuffy air of parsons and bank clerks a lingering atmosphere of adventure and glamour. He told of cobras found asleep in the billiard room at the club, of tiger shoots and playing polo in the shadow of faded pink palaces. But, most of all, he intrigued her with his tales of the Indian people, their strange customs and powerful beliefs, transporting her back to her childhood and the world she so longed to recapture.
As a child she’d gone to bed each night hungrily devouring library books written by yet another female traveller, either fictitious or factual, braving it alone in foreign climes. The women she admired rode disguised in flowing robes on testy camels over vast deserts, or roamed the South Pacific in search of their tropical destiny.
She’d wanted to be one of those women, but how she would go about it was uncertain until Charles had appeared.
For Charles, it was a revelation to watch her shining eyes and rapt expression every time he spoke. It occurred to him it would be very pleasant to come home every night to such an infatuated creature. Though he couldn’t know it, it was not so much his masculine charm that caused her face to light up whenever he spoke of India. It was India itself and the prospect of adventure, or perhaps discovering something of her past, that held her spellbound.
He almost visibly shuddered when he thought about some of the girls he’d met in India. Like the other men in his crowd, he cast a calculating eye over the cargo of English girls, the so-called “fishing fleet”, who arrived every October and stayed till the beginning of the hot season in the hope they’d find suitable husbands. He found the idea of choosing from amongst them impossible, as even the plainest and poorest of them showed an unbecoming haughtiness. For the first time in their lives, these girls found themselves in demand, and were going to make the most of it, despite the fact most of them, in his eyes, were only just passable.
After a few years of rejecting all those put before him, he decided to return to England on his next leave and find a wife for himself.
Sara Archer was not exactly beautiful, though certainly far from plain; she was what was called attractive, despite being a little overweight. He thought she was too tall for absolute beauty, as he usually liked petite women. Her teeth were very good though, and her hair lovely, despite being of a colour he was not particularly fond of, as he much preferred blondes.
He thought her eyes were rather lovely, even though framed by thick, almost black eyebrows, but she was undeniably intelligent and highly accomplished. Several nights spent listening to her play his favourite pieces on the piano was proof of her talent, that and the fact she had lived in and survived India, when so many children hadn’t, made her a far superior candidate for marriage than any other woman he’d met in England.
Despite her shortcomings, he saw her as a potential wife because he was sure she adored him, even though she did at times have an annoying habit of contradicting him on matters he felt she should know nothing about.
Being an orphan only added to her charms. There was no doting parent to make demands on her time and take her away from her wifely duties and, despite the fact her parentage was a little cloudy, he’d been assured her father had been educated at Eton, was English through and through, and had left his daughter a small annuity for her personal use only, the comfortable sum of five thousand pounds, which would be his on the day of their marriage.
Though when faced with the real prospect of marriage, there was the sudden realisation he might not be able to please himself any more. He’d momentarily forgotten about the pleasures of his club, and the freedom bachelor life brought. It was pleasant to be always available to balance the table at dinner parties, and to be surrounded by admiring women hanging on his every word.
Then there was the thrill of big game hunting, the drinking till all hours with his male friends, whose company, he had to admit, he preferred more than any woman he’d ever met. And, of course, there were all the other delights India had to offer. A thrill ran up his back at the memory of past pleasures. There were indeed compensations for a life spent as a single man, and a wife would be sure to get in the way of all that.
He’d decided after all to return to India and resume the pleasant life he’d always lived. It was only when Sara had told him about her potential engagement to another man that he had felt a sudden pang of regret. Somehow, he’d always imagined her as his own to take or leave as the whim seized him, and now there was someone else in the picture he felt as though something had been stolen from him. The thought of the other man being in the way meant nothing to him. He felt sure she’d choose him over anyone else, regardless of the consequences.
When she agreed to marry him, though, it came as a shock. But, like a man, he accepted it and there was no turning back, despite at first an almost overwhelming urge to run in the other direction.
In the end, though, it was his desire for a son and heir that finally convinced him he’d made the right choice. And he liked her, really liked her. She’d be a splendid companion for him. Now, all she had to do was fulfil the role that was expected of her, and there was no reason why their marriage should not be a success.
For Sara, alone in her room at the end of the momentous day where she had at last fulfilled the destiny expected of her, she stood before the mirror and closely examined her reflection, running her fingers over her face as though to smooth away the lingering signs of doubt. The blinding realisation had come to her as quite a shock. She’d agreed to marry a man she didn’t really know and would go to the other side of the world to live with him.
Only a few months before, the question might not have arisen, but now she asked herself … What would the ladies from our Female Emancipation group say?
It was while she had been running errands for her aunt that Sara had been stopped by a young woman bearing a placard saying, “Women of the World Unite!”
She was almost mannish in her dress and clearly not wearing stays.
“Come on in,” the girl said, laughing. “We don’t bite, and you look like it might do you some good.”
The church hall was almost empty; even so, the speaker talked with a truth and passion difficult to resist. She spoke of the unfairness of the marriage laws, and why women should have the vote; the terrible injustices inflicted on their sex, and of the foolish and restrictive nature of the female dress. For Sara, it was the beginning of an understanding she had always been dimly aware of, but, once enlightened, had changed her thinking from that day forth.
Now she saw tyranny everywhere, especially in her own home. It appalled her to see how her aunt had to pacify her husband in order to keep him content. Where once she’d grudgingly accepted the petty rituals of warming her uncle’s slippers before the fire, or listening silently while he expressed his opinions, she now eyed him with a deep and bitter resentment, longing to say what she really thought, but having to bite her tongue for the sake of peace.
The young woman in the plain blouse and skirt, known to her later as Mary, had shouted out her warnings with a raised fist, and Sara was very aware of the truth of her words.
Though she was sure she was in love with Charles, deeply in love even, and she was equally sure she was marrying a man who loved her. Also, it was three days before her twenty-third birthday, considered far beyond the turning point of being either an eligible young lady or a hopelessly lost old maid.
But it wasn’t just the fear of spinsterhood driving her to accept him.
There had been a terrible row, a row that had caused such a storm she felt it was impossible for her to stay in her aunt’s home a moment longer.
She had been secretly meeting with the Ladies Emancipation group under the pretence of attending bible studies with other so-called respectable girls when she’d been discovered.
Someone had mentioned Sara had been missing from the bible meetings for some time. Then a pamphlet on women’s rights had been found in her room and placed before her outraged uncle. For a moment she considered denying it was hers, then she admitted it and, what was more, admitted it proudly, and announced she would continue to go to the meetings no matter what.
For her uncle it was the final straw and he washed his hands of her, only making it clear he wanted her out of his sight as soon as possible.
Now, though, none of that mattered.
She could go back to India at last, India! Mother India! Her lost home that lately had haunted every thought and called her with an urgent and relentless cry, even as she slept.
They married on the day of their planned departure, in the church Sara had attended for nearly seventeen years, knowing a few hours later they’d be together for the rest of their lives.
She took a furtive look at him through her silk veil, hoping for a look of reassurance, as she was almost overwhelmed with sudden feelings of doubt. Though, when he felt her eyes upon him, instead of a returning smile, he seemed to visibly pull himself together, straightening his shoulders and swallowing hard.
Her heart sank. It seemed to her that Charles was steeling himself for something unpleasant, something he must endure, and see it through to the end at all cost.
A screeching note from the organ made her jump, and her stomach gave a sickening lurch. It came to her in a blinding flash. She may not love him after all! And perhaps he didn’t love her! And was already regretting his choice even though he’d just spoken the words, “I will” in an almost inaudible shaky murmur.
When it came her turn to speak she hesitated, caught between a desire to make a run for the open door of the church and a yearning to cling to the man who offered her a lifeline to a new world.
She glanced around in a frantic effort to find an answer, but saw instead the face of her aunt, alarmingly pale, though smiling bravely, and her uncle, nodding furiously at her with a tight grimace on his lips, clearly willing her to get it over with.
She must have responded, as the final words, “I now pronounce you man and wife”, were uttered at last, but Sara, at the threshold of what she felt every young woman must desire, instead of feeling the expected rush of joy, felt an overwhelming sense of doom.
Then, as she turned to walk down the aisle towards her new life, her aunt seemed to haul herself to her feet as she reached out to the new bride for a congratulatory kiss, swayed a little, then, grasping the folds of Sara’s gown in her fingers, fell in a crumpled unconscious heap at the feet of the bride and groom, clutching a torn piece of silk from the wedding veil.
The illness was serious, and inevitably fatal. When her aunt begged her to stay to help nurse her it seemed unfeeling to do otherwise and, even though she expected Charles to protest, he was remarkably accepting about the prospect of travelling to India without his bride.
“In some ways it’s a good thing,” he said as he tried to reassure her.
“My house is a mere bachelor’s hut and this small delay will give me a chance to find you something more suitable, and you can brush up on your Hindi. Tamil will be beyond you, I feel. But Hindi will come in very useful in dealing with the servants. Also—” he gave her a furtive glance “—my position demands my wife be well dressed. Lady Palmer entertains on a regular basis and you’ll be expected, as my wife, to make a bit of a splash.”
“Oh …” Sara blushed as she looked down at what was meant to be her going away outfit, an ill-fitting mustard-coloured dress which did nothing for her complexion, adorned with oversized leg-of-mutton sleeves too tight under the armpits.
All her clothes had been made by her aunt’s dressmaker, a lady who specialised in a style that had died out in Paris at least twenty years before, despite still flourishing amongst the vicars’ wives and spinsters of Hampstead, and any suggestion that poor Miss Blunt might be exchanged for someone more modern was quickly suppressed.
Though her fears about the suitability of her clothes seemed trivial compared with the cruel reality that Charles would be leaving her any moment, her husband but not a husband, not till they spent a night together under the same roof.
In an agony of misery she threw her arms around his neck, unwilling to let him go. There was no question of his staying; he’d extended his leave already and was anxious to return to his duties.
He reached up to remove her arms from his neck, gave her a final brief kiss, then hurried away without looking back, while she flung herself down on the settee and cried as though her heart would break. To be so close to freedom, then to have it taken away, was almost more than she could bear.
Later, when her tears were exhausted and she felt nothing but an empty despair, she’d climbed wearily to her feet and made her way upstairs to the sick room.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_b20ca4d7-82c9-5714-8285-a78cca5be2ec)
The shoreline moved closer still, and the mirage formed into a blinding reality. They would be there soon. Sara pulled a mirror out of her bag and examined the clear light topaz eyes squinting back at her. They appeared unimpressive in that harsh white glare, but she knew they would be lovely again once she was in a softer light. Her eyes were the only feature on her face she wouldn’t change, and the rest of it she found more acceptable now, with the miraculous clearing of her skin and an equally miraculous dramatic weight loss.
The first small signs of improvement had come soon after the marriage ceremony. She had lost at least fifteen pounds in only two months, forcing her to buy a completely new wardrobe, and her doctor pronounced her excess weight and her skin condition as being based in nervous tension, hinting it was not unusual for single women to improve in looks with the marriage state.
She didn’t tell him that, even though she was a wife, she was still technically a virgin, and perhaps the real reason for the improvement was she was no longer made to feel ashamed whenever the subject of marriage was mentioned.
After being at sea for eight weeks, including a further month spent in the Canary Isles due to having to mend a split mast, where she’d gorged herself on fresh fruit and vegetables, the almost constant faint rash around her nose had miraculously disappeared. Then the fine red bumps on her cheeks and forehead had faded completely, revealing a surface with the fresh even tone of rich cream.
Her true beauty however, lay in her bone structure, a beauty that would last long beyond the freshness of youth. Without the excess weight, her face became more refined, making her eyes appear much larger. Her posture had always been good, and her straight back and long neck gave her elegance, far from the clumsy girl of her youth.
Though it was the new shape of her once heavy eyebrows that gave her the most pleasure. Never could she have imagined such a small change could have produced so dramatic an improvement to her face. The mysterious ritual of threading, performed by an Arab woman in a tent in a Canary Isles market, had turned her shaggy brows into a blackbird’s wings, giving her face a striking new beauty. Now she secretly plucked them to keep their shape, knowing her aunt would be horrified had she known, believing a lady must learn to live with her imperfections, and any thought of artifice was vulgar in the extreme.
Sara had no such feelings as she smiled at her reflection and smoothed her skin with a cautious finger. She hoped fervently the hated rash had been banished forever, though; it seemed the further she travelled from England, the healthier and lovelier she became.
Her much improved looks were a novelty still, and sometimes she found herself studying her face in the mirror for longer than necessary.
Though, as time wore on, she trained herself not to think too much about her new-found charms, but secretly enjoyed the long slow looks men gave her as she passed them on her walks around the deck of the ship.
She snapped the mirror shut and slipped it back into her bag. While she’d been dreaming, the shoreline had drifted closer still. The clear blue waters had changed to a dirty yellow, and the once vague outline of the distant bank had turned into buildings set amongst tall waving palms and enormous trees spreading their branches along the baking paths like engorged pythons.
Some of the structures were prosperous and ornate, more bizarre, romanticised reflections of their respectable English cousins, while others, mere piles of other people’s cast-off rubbish and the fallen branches of coconut palms, were turned into little caves to huddle under for a moment’s respite from the merciless sun and the endless mass of humanity.
Towering over even the grand buildings of the British were the temples, shimmering through the damp heat, many storeys high, barbaric and mysterious, intricately carved with unlikely gods and decorated with gaudy impossible colours and gold leaf. There were dozens of them, punctuating the tropical landscape every few hundred yards and soaring towards the heavens like the wild and fantastic imaginings of a dream, monumental and overwhelming.
Remembered snatches of whispered stories of ancient and primitive rituals carried out in the dark recesses of the temples crept back into her mind, making her shiver: stories too horrible to be spoken of out loud, used as a weapon by the servants when she was naughty, to frighten her into good behaviour.
Sara stared out towards the shore, her eyes squinting in the fierce sun. There, rising and falling with the motion of the waves, something floated on the surface of the water.
She peered over the side of the ship, then reeled back, shaken and drained of colour. Afloat in her funeral bier, a woven basket lined with a mass of faded flowers and wrapped in white gauze, slept a perfect child of a few weeks old.
A loving hand had placed the fragrant flowers around the halo of the child’s head and over the little body, before releasing it into the sea. An unwanted girl, perhaps, who’d died conveniently, but had clearly been loved by someone in her short life.
The child floated past, an image of unbearable loneliness at the beginning of her journey. Sara’s eyes followed the little voyager, smarting with painful tears till the yellow water turned deep blue again, and for a brief moment she was comforted by this.
Then her stomach lurched, and for a moment she thought she was going to be sick. She clutched the rail and squeezed her eyes till she saw stars, praying with a sudden fervent superstitious fear, to crush the image lingering in her mind.
She began to pace again, now with a more urgent step. It seemed they would never reach land and the shore was further away than ever.
Then, slowly, as she watched, the scene before her sprang to life. A tree swayed in the gentle breeze, and the thousands of coloured dots moving along the shore evolved into human beings.
Children began to play, running back and forth on childish missions. Thin wisps of grey smoke rose from the cooking fires where women sat, draped in vivid saris, their movements impossibly elegant for such humble everyday tasks.
Then the first sounds, laughter and shouting in Hindi, and Tamil, and music, a strange off-beat medley to western ears. There was a procession somewhere.
The handful of European passengers appeared on deck one by one. Already there was a distance between them, making it clear their relationships had been held together almost solely by the confines of the voyage.
Secretly, Sara intended to keep few of her promises of undying friendship if she could help it, though, much to her regret, with Cynthia Palmer there might be no choice.
Sara watched Cynthia with mixed emotions as she moved through the crowd on the deck, languid and unhurried, smiling her goodbyes, her white toy poodle, recently bought in an elegant pet shop on the Rue de la Paix, clutched in her small gloved hands, stopping now and then to speak to a friend, her voice hardly ever raised above a quiet murmur. Sara crushed a pang of rising irritation. If only she could believe in the value of such self-control it would have made her life so much easier.
A sweet young girl’s voice, heavily laced with the rounded vowels of the well brought up, called out her name, and Sara looked up with a start from her daydreaming.
“Cynthia, how fresh you look. How do you do it, in this heat? I’m melting already.” Her voice sounded false even to herself, and she wondered how Cynthia could not fail to notice it.
But then, Charles had made a point of how important it was for her to become friends with Lady Palmer and, even more so, her daughter Cynthia. She recalled his words in his letter: “I’m sure you’ll become as fond of them as I am for, as we often say in our little community, it’s impossible not to love Cynthia and her mamma.”
Sara was fairly sure she didn’t love either of them, and at times positively disliked Lady Palmer, though she was clearly outnumbered.
Cynthia was as pretty and fragile as a Dresden figurine, though it soon became clear her fragility was misleading, disguising an unbending core combined with a steely determination, at least when it came to having her own way. Though there was never any need to exert any pressure when it came to getting what she wanted; it seemed to happen naturally, as though it was always meant to be.
She had a habit of grasping the arm of the person she wished to beguile, holding them rigid, like a fox with her teeth on the neck of a rabbit, but, as a kind of compensation, she held them under the impression they were the only person in the world worth knowing. When she wished to move on, her small white hand would relax, releasing her captive, now limp with admiration, and left with a desire to be singled out by her again as soon as possible.
Though, when away from her mother and alone with Sara in her cabin, they could spend almost happy hours together as each girl talked of their hopes of the future with their respective husbands. Cynthia’s intended would join her in Madras in a few months’ time, where they’d be married before returning to Europe for their honeymoon and a new life in England. She’d met her fiancé William when he’d stayed with her parents in Madras and he’d fallen in love with her then. His health was precarious though, and more than a few months in India was dangerous for him. Cynthia’s face would take on an almost childlike radiance as she spoke of her husband’s country estate and her hopeful future away from the hell of India. It was at these times Sara could sympathise with the girl, knowing from personal experience how painful it was to be trapped and powerless, and at the mercy of another person’s demands.
Her mother, Lady Palmer, was a big woman with coarse sallow skin, large features and a passion for extravagant clothing, who seemed constantly astonished to have given birth to such a fair and dainty child. Her main concerns, apart from her daughter, in whose life she took an almost unnatural interest, were the comings and goings of Madras society and all who moved within it. She set the standards of behaviour and it was up to everyone else to observe and follow, and woe betide anyone who didn’t.
“I expected Charles would have married one of the girls at home …”
Lady Palmer had scrutinized Sara shamelessly through her lorgnette. “Personally, I saw no need to look further than our little community, and there were many girls I thought more than suitable for him to marry.” This was said with such an air of wounded outrage Sara had laughed aloud, then said, “Well, why didn’t he then if they were so suitable?” causing Lady Palmer to glare in return.
“It’s no laughing matter, my girl. Marriage is a serious business.
However,” she conceded, “I’m sure dear Charles had his reasons. Indeed, I do believe at one time he might have asked Cynthia. Charles always seemed to pay her such particular attention, and we are so very fond of him.” She frowned, as though recalling past times. “We’ll miss him to balance the table at dinner. He was always so useful as a single man.”
Sara could only laugh, knowing with a sure instinct nothing she could say would alter Lady Palmer’s behaviour. Her role was supposed to be to endure and smile, but so far she had only questioned and scowled.
Their relationship was bordering on disastrous but, just in time, a small voice in Sara’s head had cautioned her to be careful. All those years in an English boarding school had taught her it was vulgar to express what one really thought, and she would give Lady Palmer another chance, for Charles’s sake.
Sara sat in the longboat, waiting to be taken ashore. She’d been there for some time, wilting in the stifling glare of an unbearable heat with the muddy waves slapping with an uncomfortable violence against the sides of the boat. She was jammed between a fat matron holding a bird cage containing a fast wilting canary and, on her other side, a fretful seasick child, all due to a dispute as to whether Cynthia’s poodle should or should not be caged for the trip ashore. The purser was insistent it should be so, and Cynthia was equally insistent that it should not be. The other passengers were becoming increasingly irritable at the long delay, though Sara was almost thankful for the wasted time as it put off the inevitable a little longer.
She scanned the indistinct mass of faces on the distant shore, her stomach a tight knot of nausea, not knowing if her misery was due to anxiety or seasickness. Was Charles there amongst the crowd, staring out to sea, perhaps regretting his choice of bride or, worse, lying dead somewhere from an all-consuming tropical disease, as her uncle had often predicted? Was she abandoned before even beginning to be a wife? It was impossible to know. Charles was a poor correspondent and during the space of the fourteen months since she’d seen him last he’d written perhaps only half a dozen letters. In vain she’d scanned them for the passionate declarations of love she so longed for. But the contents of his notes were usually about the terrible state of the weather or graphic details of the outbreaks amongst the various castes. She wondered sometimes if he was trying to put her off coming at all, but at the bottom of the page there was his usual declaration, “Love Charles”. That one word kept her hopes for future happiness alive.
At last, Cynthia made her way to the head of the ladder leading down to the longboat, her poodle in her arms and a self-satisfied smile on her face. She had won, as she knew she would.
A group of Indian workers, hired to help the passengers with their luggage, hovered around the launch, their fragile boats rising and falling with an uneasy violence at each surge of the waves, and it seemed must be thrown into the dense yellow water any moment. They watched the passengers with anxious eyes as they jostled for position. Charles had written the region was in the grip of famine and it was clear these men were hungry … hungry with a desperation that made them careless.
Halfway down the ladder the dog began to struggle, being all at once aware of being poised above water. She made a frantic attempt to hide her head under her mistress’s arm, thinking in her dog mind that if she couldn’t see the danger then it wasn’t there. Her struggles became more frantic, the dog’s hard little legs working with a mindless terror, clawing for a more secure foothold against the shiny silk of Cynthia’s gown.
Her mistress let out a piercing scream as the dog threw itself into the air with a yelp of fear.
The poodle fell like a stone. At first sinking from sight, then emerging from the muddy sea where a little wet head could be seen swimming in useless circles just out of reach of the boats. Some of the Indians laughed.
Their lives were too harsh to care about the fate of one small dog, though the shrewd amongst them saw it as an opportunity sent from the Gods.
Sara watched transfixed as one old man stood with shaky determination in the prow of his boat, letting go of his hold on the side. He was a tragic knight, his armour a useless rag serving as a kind of cloak knotted around his painfully thin body and his weapon a gnarled walking stick. Sara cried out in a whisper, “Don’t! Please don’t!”
He was too old to be out competing with the younger men. He should have been resting under the shade of a tamarind tree, smoking a cheroot and enjoying the last years of his life in peace and tranquillity. But, with desperation driving him, fate had decreed otherwise.
His smile was of an unusual sweetness as he reached out towards the dog, murmuring words of comfort and encouragement.
But there lay his mistake; by now, the others had realised the value in saving the dog and all rushed at once to get to the prize first. A sudden lurch of the boat and the old man fell like a shot bird over the side, his ragged cloak black against the sky, barely making a splash. He recovered quickly and swam towards the dog, his arms stiff awkward paddles. There was a hideous battle, an almost comic game of catch-me-if you-can, as the dog seemed to almost deliberately swim further out of his reach.
“Mother! Do something! Poor Fanny!” Cynthia covered her eyes and fell back in a faint.
Lady Palmer called out the price of the dog’s life, and there was a sudden desperate jockeying to reach the dog first, and the old man was forgotten in the rush. An untimely swell from one of the larger boats drove him further away and he called out, a weak and almost apologetic cry. A couple of boats halted, looking first at the old man and then at the dog, but the prize made the decision an easy one.
The old man made a last feeble attempt to save himself, a hollow snatching at thin air, then there was a sudden jerk of his head as though something unseen was pulling at him from underneath the waves.
The thick water rose in a swell and he rolled with it. His face appeared for a moment, and Sara caught the full impact of the certainty of his own death.
Her scream seemed to recall him to life, and he struggled for breath with the last of his strength.
For a transient moment they made eye contact and in his look was a pleading that cut through to her soul. She leaned out towards him as far as she could, stretching out her fingers in a futile attempt to reach him, her eyes fixed on his.
“Try! You must try!” His eyes widened for a brief moment, then flickered and closed, as though resigned to his fate.
A cry, more like a sigh, rang out. “Prema!” Then, with a final thrashing on the surface, he sank under the yellow water.
There was a flurry of panic on deck as the captain ordered a lifebuoy to be thrown. It hit the water near where he’d disappeared, but the old man did not surface again.
The crowd rushed to the side of the ship, peering down into the old man’s tomb, some of them trying not to show how they were enjoying the drama and congratulating themselves on their good fortune to be alive while the old man was with his Gods.
Surely, Sara thought, suddenly hopeful, it’s a trick … The old man’s a fakir and any moment he’ll rise up and the crowd will reward him with a few coins. But he didn’t appear; his life was over in a terrible paltry moment.
The trip to the shore was made in an uneasy silence. The dog was back in her mistress’s arms, unaware of the catastrophe it had caused. Cynthia, though, was a little shaken out of her usual self-control.
“The silly old man …” Cynthia straightened the dog’s wet pink ribbon “… I do feel sorry for him, but what could he have been thinking of? And now he’s paid the price of his foolishness.”
Her mother sat close, patting her daughter’s arm with clumsy affection and murmuring, “My poor child, how dreadful it might have been.”
“It’s all right, Mother. Don’t fuss! It turned out all right after all. Fanny is safe, aren’t you, darling …” she cooed as she wrapped the wet squirming dog more tightly in her pink cashmere shawl.
“It didn’t turn out so well for the poor old man!” Sara spat the words with a bitterness she couldn’t hide. She couldn’t help it, even though she knew the words were the first nails in the coffin that sealed her social fate. Both women turned to her with unmistakable dislike—she had shown her true colours and they’d never forgive her.
She turned away, pressing her palms into her aching eyes, trying to drive the image of the old man’s last moments out of her mind.
“What was he trying to say to me? Prema? What could it mean?” Malika would have called it a bad omen and rushed to place an offering at the temple to ward off further bad luck, but she, as a civilised English woman, could only try to crush the horror of the event she knew would haunt her forever.
News of the disaster had reached the shore, though there were no obvious signs of grief from the crowd, only an air of quiet resignation. From some quarters there was almost an air of gaiety, as though the old man’s death, not necessarily a misfortune for him if he had lived his life well, had spelt good fortune for someone else.
The sharp-eyed boatman who’d saved the dog kept a watchful eye on Lady Palmer, following close on her heels, accompanied by a group of his fellow boatmen who congratulated him on his good luck with open envy.
Lady Palmer kept her eyes averted, her hands clutching her purse with a tight grip despite the man’s pleas for his reward.
“All in good time, all in good time,” she murmured while the man followed behind, all the while grinning and nodding around at the crowd who’d gathered in increasing numbers, sensing a chance for the British ladies to appease the Gods by paying generous baksheesh. The people crushed closer, hands out, grasping and desperate, begging and pleading for coins, fighting each other in the scramble to be noticed.
“Memsahib! Dear and good memsahib! Baksheesh! Baksheesh!”
Sara bit her lip as she began to feel a rising panic.
“Perhaps, Lady Palmer, you could pay the man and the crowd would go away.”
“Well, I would if I had any money,” the woman snapped in return. “It’s just that I don’t have any on me at this particular moment. Indeed, I never carry it. Perhaps you could pay the fellow.”
“Me? I don’t have any money … at least no Indian money, only English pounds and I don’t think that would do.”
“Well, give the fellow what you have,” Lady Palmer replied, dismissing the matter and considering her part in the business now over.
Sara opened her purse and the man moved closer, his eyes fixed upon the contents. She held out a pound note and in an instant the man snatched it out of her hand and at first stared at it with disgust before throwing it down in the dust with a cry of anger. Then, in a flash, a gnarled brown hand darted out through the crowd of dusty bare feet, picked up the note, and someone more knowing quickly disappeared with it.
The boatman then turned all his attention to Sara. Lady Palmer had been forgotten. “Give me!”
Sara was angry now, and wondered how it came to be that she was bearing the brunt of Cynthia’s selfishness and her mother’s stupidity.
The crowd surrounding the besieged women stared with curious fixated eyes made wild with hunger. They crammed more tightly against each other in a tight rancid mass of unwashed bodies, allowing small ragged, almost naked children to scamper like mice over their heads, while the women stood clutching each other for protection in the ever-decreasing circle. The over-excited children, leaping in a grotesque dance on the heads and shoulders of the people, called out in halting English, “Give me money! I have no mother! I have no father!” thrusting their fingers in open empty mouths, while dodging angry snatches at their hard, thin legs from the furious onlookers.
Sara felt a furtive hand touch her thigh, then, as though being assured she was real after all, felt it again, this time with an added hard pinch.
She let out a faint scream of fear as she felt something hard hit the brim of her hat. Her first thought was that they were trying to kill her, then she looked up, astonished to see a glittering shower of coins fly high over her head, followed quickly by another, then another.
The children let out animal-like cries and flew after the path of the coins, followed by most of the crowd and leaving Sara standing alone in a cleared space. Though a number of the onlookers were so overwhelmed by the unfolding scene they froze on the spot, then fell to prostrate themselves at the feet of the man who stood before them, his legs sturdily apart and his commanding arms crossed over his chest.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_52553613-4cde-5260-95fa-243503993236)
It was clear the blood of two races flowed through his veins, uniting to produce a man of such dramatic appearance Sara found herself staring at him in awe. He had the air of a person who was used to attention, so much so that he’d mastered the art of appearing to be unaware of the impression he was making.
He was taller than the average native Indian, and of a bulkier build, being broad-shouldered and thickset. His heavy masculinity was an odd contrast to his clothing, as he wore an almost transparent muslin kurta, through which could easily be seen the powerful contours of his chest straining against the fine fabric where it met his folded arms. A long white muslin dhoti hemmed with a wide band of gold thread hung around his waist and down to the ground in the manner of a Brahmin priest.
Standing out amongst the almost black servants, the unusual pale gold of his skin revealed at least one of his parents had European blood, though his hair was as blue-black as a leopard’s pelt. He wore it combed straight back off his forehead, falling almost to his shoulders in the style of a Mogul prince.
His European ancestry showed too in the colour of his clear light grey eyes, making the irises appear more intensely dark and hypnotic. Though there was nothing dreamlike about his expression and, despite his prophet-like clothing, he glared out at the world with ferocity from under his black winged eyebrows, and an expression that seemed to say, I defy you all!
There was something there too in the corners of his full, sharply defined mouth that hinted at contempt, but at whom or what Sara couldn’t tell.
Lady Palmer sniffed and turned away in an elaborate display of disapproval, even placing herself between him and her daughter as though his presence alone could be contaminating. Her behaviour did not escape the stranger’s notice, though, instead of being shaken by her obvious dislike, he seemed to struggle to hide his laughter.
Sara gave a slight bow of her head in his direction, hoping to initiate an introduction, but Lady Palmer didn’t attempt to even acknowledge the man.
He took a step closer and bowed. When he finally spoke, it was with a heavy accent as though English was his second language, though there was no sing-song note to his voice as with other Indian people. He spoke French with the accent of a Parisian.
“Pardonnez moi, mesdames. I apologise for the crudeness of my tactics, but, as you see, it is effective.”
Lady Palmer turned her face away from him without a word, and Sara, feeling the shame that should’ve been Lady Palmer’s, thanked him again with genuine gratitude.
A group of women in saris of gorgeous colours and wearing huge gold nose rings sat clumped together nearby, giggling behind their hands and pointing at Sara, their heads swaying like snakes as they came together to whisper their secrets. Little snatches of remembered Hindi came back to her. They were saying something about her hair and wondering if she used henna. The stranger heard them too and glanced in Sara’s direction, his eyes focused on her hair. She flushed bright pink, without knowing why, and stared down at her feet, as was her habit as a child when she was in trouble. He sensed her discomfort and smiled to himself in an unpleasant way, as though wondering how he could exploit the situation.
He appeared to reject the thought at once, feeling it was beneath him, and he raised his eyes heavenwards, as though the whole episode was nothing more than an unpleasant interlude he must endure. Then he turned to face the crowd, his palms held outwards like a prophet. “What is the problem here?”
No one seemed willing to answer now they had the chance, and after an impatient few moments he chose a quiet old man with the face of a saint and commanded him to speak.
The stranger’s face changed with the telling of the events, first showing only a raised eyebrow at the fate of the drowned man, then a sharp exhale from his rather strongly shaped Gallic nose. A slow scornful smile spread over his face as his eyes flickered towards the group of British women.
Lady Palmer held her face averted while Cynthia stood aloof, an image of picturesque innocence as she held Fanny in her arms. Only Sara seemed connected to the scene, with her purse ajar and her face flushed with guilt, showing she’d been responsible for the entire debacle. By now the crowd had turned resentful and some even shouted angry words in the direction of Cynthia, who held her dog closer to her chest.
The stranger clapped his hands and everyone stopped at once. He’d heard enough and his patience was at an end. He snapped his fingers and a servant hurried to his side. In a second the boatman was paid his due, and hurried away.
Sara felt she must say something, even if the others wouldn’t. “I’m sure Lady Palmer would be happy to reimburse you the money if you would leave your name and address.”
“She knows who I am …” the man gave her a slow and almost unpleasant smile “… and where I live.” He then bowed in an almost military fashion, before turning away from her with a final blank stare.
Something in his manner drove her to make him notice her. Perhaps it was a desire not to be included with Lady Palmer and Cynthia in his obvious dislike, so she summoned all her powers to confront him.
“Well, I do not, sir.” She smiled, hoping to charm him a little. “May I have the pleasure of knowing who I am indebted to?”
He glared back at her, fixing her with his strange hypnotic eyes, and she wondered if perhaps he was a prince and she’d broken protocol by even speaking to him at all.
“My name is Sabran. Monsieur Ravi Sabran.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn’t a prince after all.
“And mademoiselle … will you allow me to know your name?” This time his voice was soft, almost a purr, but Sara had the distinct feeling he was being polite against his will.
“Not mademoiselle … I am …”
Before she could finish speaking, an old man rushed to his side and spoke excitedly in Tamil while pointing to the crowd.
“Excuse me, mademoiselle …” He raised a hand to stop her, and she glared; he was clearly not listening to her at all.
“This matter is not yet at an end. There is another act to this tragedy.”
As though on cue, a woman pushed her way through the remaining onlookers and stood before them, her chin raised in wild defiance, her hard eyes darting from left to right, appraising the scene before her. Her skin was almost black, with wild uncombed hair flaring around her sharp fox-like face. Though, unlike the other Indian women, she wore her faded and torn sari blouse with a flared embroidered skirt worn low enough on the hip to show a beautiful and sensuous midriff, causing a few of the men to stare at her with lustful looks, despite her fierce and forbidding appearance. Sara recalled the tales from her childhood with vague fear. The woman was a Tribal; like gypsies, they were rumoured to be child stealers. She balanced on her bare hip a tiny girl, no more than a year old and naked except for a cheap gilt bracelet around her wrist, showing someone had thought her worthy of adornment, even though the woman held the child carelessly and without love.
The child, though unaware of this last cruel blow of fate to her short life, seemed to know she was the cause of all the commotion, and sat, her body limp and hopeless, on the woman’s hip, looking around at an unfriendly world, her huge kohl-rimmed eyes too frightened for tears.
The old man began to shout once more and pointed at the baby with his stick, while Sabran listened, his hand held high to prevent interruption from anyone else.
Then, after the speech had ended, he thanked the old man with more coins and after a brief, almost disrespectful bow, turned to Cynthia, who, outraged that he’d dared to speak to her at all, clung to her mother’s arm for protection and stared back at him with her most haughty glare.
“This baby is the dead man’s granddaughter and has no other family. This woman was minding the child. He promised her a few rupees when he returned …” He added, with scorn he didn’t bother to hide, “And as there is no doubt he will not return, she thinks you should pay her for her lost earnings.”
Cynthia pouted, not looking at him but at the air above his head. “You must know what thieves these people are … It’s probably her own child and she’s hoping to profit by it,” Cynthia replied before turning away, the matter at an end.
Only a faint twitching around his nostrils betrayed Sabran’s anger at the insult. At first it seemed as though he might say something in return, but then he smiled to himself, a smile slow and somewhat sinister, as though he was imagining what kind of revenge he might inflict later and at his leisure. Sara caught his look and shivered. She felt the danger in offending him, even if Cynthia didn’t.
The woman was persistent. She came closer, holding the baby up for all to see, then made a sudden snatch at Cynthia’s gown. “Baksheesh!”
It was as though a spider had crawled on her dress, and Cynthia leaped back a step, appalled at the woman’s touch. “No! No baksheesh … You don’t deserve it, go away. Go away at once!”
Sabran spoke to one of his servants, who immediately threw a handful of coins at the woman’s feet.
In a flash, the child was dumped without ceremony on the ground, the coins snatched up with a savage snarl at anyone who might steal them from her and, with one final disdainful look at Cynthia, she dissolved into the crowd as if by magic.
Sabran laughed, though it was clear he was not amused. “It seems it wasn’t her child after all.”
The baby sat alone in the dust, looking around at the sea of strangers, her eyes wide and helpless, though managing to convey a real or imagined accusation in her stare. Her look failed to hit the mark with Cynthia, though drenched Sara with an overwhelming sense of responsibility.
“There must be someone? Surely she can’t be entirely alone.” Sara’s questioning looks were met by blank disinterest, though somehow it was implied that by speaking at all, the future of the child now rested with her.
In a curious way she felt it too, and at that moment she knew she couldn’t walk away. The girl child she’d seen floating on the sea had been an omen—a message, for her eyes only! The feeling was something she’d only ever read about: a lightning strike of realisation!
She crouched down to stroke the child’s velvet skin. “Poor little thing.” She hardly mouthed the words. Even so, the child let out a terrified howl.
The child sat forlorn and alone in the dust, crying as though she already knew her fate lay in the kindness of strangers, and Sara couldn’t bear it.
Then she remembered an Indian lullaby Malika must have sung to her as a child. Forgetting to be self-conscious, Sara began to sing, a lilting pretty tune in Hindi. “Nini baba nini … mera baba soja …”
The child stopped crying to stare at her, and for a few moments the chaos was stilled and everything was quiet. Even Ravi Sabran’s manner had softened a little under the calming effect of the lullaby. Now he looked at her with a genuine curiosity.
When she finished, Sara rose to her feet, brushing the yellow dust off her skirt. “Well, I’m not leaving till I find out who will take care of this child.”
At first no one came forward, then, after a few words spoken with ferocity and obvious impatience by Sabran, everyone, including Sara, jumped. A servant hurried forward and stood behind the child like a sentry, every now and then guiding her gingerly with his stick if she attempted to crawl away from the spot.
Lady Palmer had had enough. She called out, in her anger forgetting to be ladylike, “If only my husband were here … Why is no one here to meet us?”
There was an uncomfortable silence, then, as though answering Lady Palmer’s prayers, separating itself from the noise of the crowd, came a male voice, deep, familiar and reassuring.
“Move along will you? Out of the way.” His tone was calm at first, then as though through gritted teeth. “Move away at once, damn you!”
A shower of batons slashing wildly over the heads of the crowd preceded a sudden tide of hard-faced policemen in mustard serge uniforms, creating a path through which Charles emerged, his handsome face red with frustration.
In a moment he was standing before his wife.
“Sara?” There was a flash of shock in his eyes, as if he couldn’t quite believe it was her.
“Charles …” she called out, forgetting to be restrained in the joy of the moment. She fumbled with her hair, then was suddenly shy. She could say no more.
Lady Palmer pounced. “Charles … At last … Praise the Lord you’re here. Take us away at once.”
“Lady Palmer, welcome back.” His words were directed at her, but his eyes were fixed on his wife.
Cynthia slipped her arm into his and hung on tight, gazing up at him with what Sara thought were adoring eyes. “Charles! Where have you been?” Her voice had changed to a babyish lisp. “We’ve had the most dreadful time.”
“Yes, my poor girl, she’s suffered so much …” Lady Palmer clung to his other arm.
Charles hesitated, feeling besieged and unsure of which direction to take. Then he gently extricated himself from the arms of the clinging women with a stiff bow and took Sara’s hand to raise it to his lips.
“My dear Sara, I’m so sorry to be late; there was a serious incident and it couldn’t wait, not even for you.”
He looked down at her, scanning her face till she squirmed. Then he leaned down to whisper in her ear, “How lovely you are. I must have forgotten.” He was genuinely puzzled. He had retained the image of her when he had seen her last on the day of their marriage and couldn’t imagine she would be any different. He remembered with a shudder the too tight mustard wool dress, the almost matronly hairstyle. That image was replaced by a face verging on beautiful, mostly due to her lovely eyes and clear pale skin. He had never noticed the shape and colour of her lips before. Surely in England they were unremarkable? Her teeth had always been good, better than most English girls he knew, but surely much whiter than before. Her fine muslin blouse showed a tantalising hint of small but perfectly shaped breasts above a slim waist, held in check by a wide black belt adorned with a bunch of fabric violets. Her dark green skirt was almost shockingly modern in the slimness of its cut, but the overall effect was of fresh elegance so far from the musty, plum velvet heaviness of the middle-class drawing room he’d left her in.
But it wasn’t just a question of her slim figure and smart clothes. The expression on her face confounded him.
Then he saw it in a flash of rare understanding. He’d left behind a doting awkward girl and was reunited with a sophisticated woman who seemed, in the year or so since he’d seen her last, somehow to have acquired a style and assurance of her own.
“You have missed me then?”
He answered her by giving a look that caused a little shiver to run up her spine, then, putting his arm around her waist, he gave her a discreet kiss on the cheek.
A flash of pride shot through her body.
He was even more handsome than she remembered, though perhaps a little thinner. His skin, once a healthy light brown with patches of high colour on his cheeks, was now burnt to a dark tan, making his thick blond hair appear almost white, and his eyes a brilliant blue. He looked tired, and for a short moment she experienced a brief burst of concern, but then it died away almost at once. His back was ramrod-straight in his grey serge suit. She knew it would take more than mere soaring temperatures to defeat him.
He turned on the crowd, shouting irritably in Tamil. They drew back at once and it was clear his authority wouldn’t be questioned.
Her arm slipped through his, bringing him back to face her once more.
“I hope the trip wasn’t too dreadful …” He could hardly look at her without his cheeks flushing a bright red.
She mumbled an answer, over-polite and on her best behaviour. “Not at all, we had good weather for most of it.”
He looked away, obviously distracted and, it seemed, a little angry.
She searched his face, wondering what could be wrong, but his attention was taken by Cynthia, who stood smiling up at him from under her forget-me-not blue bonnet that suited her eyes very well.
Sara watched his beaming face with a rising tinge of jealousy. He really did look very pleased to see Cynthia. Too pleased, perhaps?
“Your trip went well?”
“Very well. William’s family are charming, but of course it’s what one would expect from people of such high standing.” Cynthia’s eyes held his for a long moment and it seemed he was enthralled.
“I can’t tell you how devastated we all are at having you taken away from us.”
“Of course I’ll miss all my friends …” she smiled “… especially you, Charles.” Then she touched his arm with her tiny pink fan, leaving him helpless and trapped by her charm.
“Well, Charles, we’ve found ourselves in a tiny mess.” Then she made a dab at her eyes with her lace handkerchief and moved closer to him.
“You always seem to know the right thing to do.”
Sara almost laughed out loud at such obvious flattery, but Charles seemed not to notice how he was being manipulated.
“Now, my dear Cynthia, what’s all this fuss about?” Charles had to lean down to hear her as, even standing on tiptoe, her neat little head only came to his shoulder, making her seem all the more vulnerable.
Cynthia whispered into his ear, sometimes taking quick looks at Sara as she did so. He listened intently, then gave the baby a brief glance; she now sat content with a piece of dripping mango in her chubby fingers, encircled by people making half-hearted efforts to amuse her, all of them now anxious to appear to have some part in her ownership, having seen there could be money in it.
“Most unfortunate,” he murmured. “I’ll deal with it.” He clapped his hands and called out, “Shakur! Get here at once, you lazy devil!”
A manservant appeared before them, staring at Sara with a wide grin on his face, hardly taking his eyes off her except to look around at the crowd, hoping they would notice his importance.
“This is Shakur; he’s my head man.”
As a mark of the position he held, Shakur wore one of his master’s cast-off shirts over his long dhoti. His thin neck stuck out of a frayed collar that was too big for him, but somehow he presented himself with a dignity impossible to ridicule.
He bowed again, pressing his palms together and touching his forehead in a blessing. Sara liked him at once. He grinned at her, showing large perfect white teeth.
“Is this lady the new madam, sahib?” He moved his head from side to side in time with his high sing-song voice.
“Yes, this lady is my wife, and mind you don’t forget it.”
Sara softened the moment with a smile.
“How do you do, Shakur?”
“I am well, madam.” He seemed to study her face with obvious delight and blessed her fervently once more. He admired the fine bones of her hands and wrists, her white skin and her hair … a very auspicious colour … the colour of dark saffron threads.
Sara smiled again with genuine kindness, and he blessed her once more before stealing a hasty look at Lady Palmer and visibly shuddering.
Charles seemed irritated again and took charge. “Enough! Shakur, get the luggage and I’ll see you back at the carriage.”
“At once, sahib!” Shakur bustled around long enough to ensure that his importance had been acknowledged before hurrying off, saying as he left to anyone in his path, “Move along, move along, will you,” in a peculiar imitation of his master’s voice.
Charles had taken Sara’s arm to lead her away, but was distracted by the sight of Sabran, who’d retreated to talk to someone in a waiting carriage standing apart from the chaos of the wharf.
Charles was clearly very put out and flexed his hands behind his back as though trying to control his fury. Sara followed his eyes to where an exquisite girl with a face from a fairy tale was looking out of the window of the carriage, but when she felt herself being observed the vision modestly drew back with such haste it was almost as though she hadn’t existed at all.
Sabran let go of the girl’s hand and threw Charles one of his enigmatic looks.
Sara looked up at Charles’ face, trying to read his expression. His lips were white against his high colour, and his bright blue eyes seemed almost glassy as he stared back.
“Oh, do you know them, darling?” The endearment sounded odd to her ears, but it got his attention. “The gentleman was most helpful. I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t come along when he did. Charles, we must thank him.”
“I think referring to Sabran as a gentleman is perhaps too generous. However, you weren’t to know, my dear. We must leave, now.”
“But Charles, something dreadful has happened …”
He wouldn’t look at her, but kept his gaze fixed somewhere in the middle distance.
“Yes, I know … Cynthia told me …”
“Then you’ll understand how we are responsible …”
“Not responsible, surely … but I’ll arrange for one of my men to take the child to the nuns. We can’t adopt her ourselves. It would cause trouble amongst the servants. You’ve forgotten how strict the caste rules are here. Anyway, as soon as the real mother realises there’s no money to be had, she’ll turn up. I’ve seen this sort of thing before.”
He took her hand and held it firmly. There would be no more nonsense. Lady Palmer and Cynthia had made their way to the carriage, still surrounded by curious onlookers. They gave her furious impatient glares but, even so, Sara resisted, not being able to tear herself away from the child playing in the dust.
“Charles, we must do something …”
He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Lady Palmer would never allow her in the carriage. We must leave at once.”
“Pardonnez moi.”
Charles swung around to face Sabran, who stood before them with an air of barely controlled irritation. He’d been a witness to the scene between the couple and had been waiting for an opportunity to interrupt.
“Fitzroy.” He said the name as though it cost him a great deal.
Charles gave a curt nod in return. “I believe my wife has reason to be grateful to you. I want to reimburse you for your trouble.”
Sabran ignored the offer with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I do not want your money.”
Sabran stared curiously at Sara, then back to Charles. His face showed a faint glimmer of surprise, then a half smile of what she felt sure was derision, accompanied by an exaggerated, almost sarcastic bow, waving a hand before her like a courtier, and dazzling her eyes with a huge rough-cut yellow diamond set in heavy gold he wore on his wedding finger.
Usually she couldn’t bear jewellery on a man, thinking it effeminate and a sure sign of vanity, though on his hand the primitive cut of the stone seemed only to add to his air of mystery, as a sorcerer might use a wand to hypnotise his victims.
She’d caught his flicker of surprise, and even distaste also. She was shocked to see that the man didn’t admire her and might even dislike her.
“I’m here to tell you, madam, I will take the child! That is the end of the matter!” he announced.
Then, bowing again briefly in Sara’s direction, he snapped his fingers at his entourage. “Come!”
“Forgive me, monsieur, but I’m not so sure.”
At first there was a faint gleam of pure white teeth, a polite but failed attempt to cover a snarl, then, while his dark enigmatic eyes swept over her with now unconcealed dislike, he snapped his fingers and his entourage sprang to attention again.
Charles took her hand to lead her away.
“I think the matter is decided at last, my dear.”
“But the old man wanted me to take her!” She touched her heart with the tips of her fingers to emphasise the truth of her words. “I’m sure of it! And he died at peace because he believed, somehow, that I would take his granddaughter.”
There was an uncomfortable silence at her public display of passion, including Charles, who felt compelled to step in and restore order.
“My dear girl, you’re letting your imagination run away with you. Let Monsieur Sabran take her. At least, with him, she’ll be at her own level.”
Again, it took all of Sabran’s self-control to ignore Charles and speak to Sara with a calm voice. “The English have taken everything else from us. You must at least leave us our children.”
Sara stared. There was nothing more she could say, realising the truth of his words.
“But you must come to visit her often,” he said in a softer tone. “You will always be welcome.” His thickly accented voice poured over her like heavy silk. He glanced at Charles to see how he would take the invitation and was clearly pleased to see him bristle and clear his throat again.
“To make certain I’m not ill-treating her,” Sabran added, laughing softly.
“Now!” He slapped his hands together, and everyone jumped again.
“I must go, and so must you. That’s the end of the matter”.
While still dazed by his sudden display of charm, Sara watched as a waiting attendant picked up the child and held her dangling at arm’s length.
“Don’t be a fool! Give her to me!” Sabran almost snatched the child from the servant, gave Sara a final bow, then, with a dismissive look at Charles, marched away with the child, who was now crying loudly, tucked under his arm like a parcel, with his entourage hurrying along behind.
Sara had to hide her smile as she said goodbye in return. Then, as an afterthought, she called out, “Wait! What’s her name? Does anyone know anything about her? Anything at all?” She looked around at the remaining people, who stared back at her with vacant eyes.
Sabran stopped in his tracks; the baby had wet herself and left a damp patch on his clean linen. He turned and glared at Sara, his patience obviously reaching an end.
Charles hissed at her, “For goodness’ sake, my dear girl … How obstinate you’ve become. Lady Palmer is furious; please try to understand my position.”
“Just a minute, Charles, please … forgive me. It’s not a lost puppy we’re talking about, she’s a child!”
She held his gaze with her lovely eyes and, despite everything, he softened.
“You’re right, of course. She must have a name, Monsieur Sabran …”
“She must, I suppose.” He muttered a string of words in French, spoken too quickly to make out, though Sara was sure they were not flattering to her.
“What do you think of Prema?” He held his face in a tight grimace. “It was my grandmother’s name. Will that do?”
“Prema! It can’t be! It can’t be!” She swayed and for a moment she thought she might faint.
Sabran put out a hand to support her, but Charles moved quickly, at the same time giving a warning look. Sabran dropped his hand, though not without his mocking secret smile.
“The old man called out that name, just before he …” Her voice faltered, husky now with suppressed tears. “He did! It was Prema! I’m sure of it now! It must be a sign, it must be …”
“Prema … is that your name?” She bent down to gaze into the child’s eyes and the baby turned her head and gave a half smile as if to answer.
“It is!”
Sara stared at Sabran, her face shining, asking him to share in her astonishment and the absolute marvel of the thing. His eyes flashed with what she thought was a touch of alarm.
“So superstitious, madam, and you’ve only been on our shores an hour … but then, so much that happens in India is unexplained. I will ask my guru about it.”
His face was dark and frowning now, as though the whole incident had taken on a new meaning, though Sara’s face showed only glowing relief.
“Well, then … now I feel absolutely she’ll be safe with you, because of your grandmother’s name.”
“My deepest thanks, madam.” His mood changed again and it was clear he was laughing at her.
“Wait! What does the name mean in English? I’ve forgotten.”
“It means love.”
There was a faint snort of derision from Charles, but Sara was thoughtful, and sad. The memory of the old man’s drowning came over her in a rush.
“Then someone must have loved her very much, to give her that name.”
She watched Sabran’s mouth compress, as though he was going to smile, but only his eyes gleamed as he waved his hypnotic ring before her eyes once more.
“I’ll look forward to your visit, madam; it’s not often we have such a charming addition to our barbaric shores.”
“But where do you live? You must give me your address.”
“Fitzroy knows where I am. Everyone knows my house, though some may pretend otherwise.” He gave Charles another derisive look.
“It’s ‘Sans Souci’, or, if you prefer the English, ‘Without Care’.
Then he was gone, the faint sound of his laughter echoing in the distance.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_e8333a95-f272-5114-b1d6-1478dc234f4e)
An exhausted and uncomfortable silence descended upon the occupants of the carriage as they turned from the hot dusty chaos and noise of the port. Lady Palmer sat with her lips firmly compressed in a disapproving grimace, every now and then looking at Sara and snorting loudly, while Cynthia lay back under her parasol with her eyes closed, waving at her hot face with her tiny fan. Charles kept his gaze fixed ahead, seemingly unaware of Sara sitting by his side. She stole a quick glance at his averted face then slipped her fingers through his.
He started and stared at her, his face showing shocked surprise.
It was almost as if he had forgotten she was there.
They moved into a wide street bordered by centuries-old tamarind trees, their dark sinuous branches meeting overhead and intertwining to form a refuge from the heat of the relentless sun.
Civilisation in the form of English rule had asserted itself in the prosperous, mostly new buildings. They passed the High Court with its peculiar lighthouse built on top.
“That is where I hope to hold ultimate influence one day.”
Charles raised his chin high as they passed, and for a moment Sara thought he might even salute. She’d never really given his work as District Magistrate very much thought before, being so blinded by love she wouldn’t have cared how he earned his living, but now she saw how very important his work was to him. He was ambitious and, she realised with a sudden small tweak of clarity, he expected her to be ambitious too.
Pepper pot minarets adorned several other buildings, flashing in the morning sun and giving the town a cheerful feeling of domesticity and a sense of safety from the great wild expanse of India. Though, despite the monumental solidity of the buildings and the well-dressed Europeans going about their errands with their attendant servants, there was the strange ever-present feeling the grip was fragile, and it could all disappear in a heartbeat, as though a genie had transplanted a foreign world into an incompatible landscape. Even the colours of nature had an otherworldly air of unreality. It seemed impossible that such hues could exist outside of heaven, despite the fine layer of yellow dust reducing the landscape to a watercolour wash.
“I feel as though I’m in a tale from the Arabian Nights.” Sara squeezed his hand, forgetting to be shy in her happiness. “I didn’t realise it would be so beautiful.”
“Mount Road,” said Charles as they passed a wide thoroughfare leading west of the city. “Of course there was nothing here till we British came.” He waved his arms wide as though to embrace the whole street. It was as if he had built it himself.
“Yes, of course.” She frowned, trying to summon up a memory. The name was there somewhere in her cloudy past, though the road itself had changed so dramatically from the once dusty path she vaguely recalled from her childhood.
Her eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun. There, in the far distance, shimmering through the dust, was a small hill. “St Thomas Mount,” Charles said, reading her thoughts.
“Oh, yes.” Sara remembered now. “Isn’t that where it was believed the saint was murdered after he had been sent by the Lord to convert India to Christianity?”
“That’s all a lot of nonsense, of course.” Charles scoffed, “but the Indians believe it absolutely. They claim they have the remains of the Saint’s finger in the church.”
Sara smiled to herself as she remembered, with sudden clarity, her father taking her to the church built on the site of Saint Thomas’ martyrdom, and being shown the very cross he was believed to have clutched to his chest at the moment of his death. The cross itself was reputed to sweat blood at various intervals, but, tired out from watching and waiting for the phenomenon to occur, she had fainted dead away, very much impressing the pilgrims who had gathered there, claiming she had experienced a vision.
Though now, as she looked around her, Sara felt none of the influence of Christianity, despite the Protestant churches built by the British. The heat itself seemed designed for a religion based more in nature than anything conjured by man. Even the twisted primitive shapes of the trees seemed to reflect the animism of the Hindu religion. They spread their thick tendril-like branches into the air and snaked along the ground, forming little arbours decorated with scraps of silk and flowers housing small figures of Ganesh the Elephant god, and Hanuman, King of the monkeys, or Shiva himself, Lord of the Dance, despite his human form, adorned with the horror of his myriad snakelike arms.
Beneath this shaded canopy, the people of this underworld had set up their homes and businesses, little makeshift boxes containing whole worlds of domesticity and industry. Glimpses of humble home life passed them by. A child, standing naked beside his home of rusty tin and grey rags, as his mother sat squatting in the dust before him, her bracelets jingling as she scrubbed him from head to foot with soapy water, inches away from a stream of running stinking waste. A faded turquoise sari nailed to a tree lifted in the faint breeze to reveal a sleeping place for a group of small children, watched over by their grandmother as she made chapatti on a cooking fire burning in the corner.
Sara welcomed it all, despite feeling a little detached as she sat next to Charles in the woven cane landau, a relic from the beginning of the nineteenth century, pulled by a pair of small sturdy horses, her parasol raised against the already blazing morning sun. She was still reeling, with not only the unusual sensation of finding her land legs again after weeks at sea, but also the conflicting emotions of her dramatic encounters of the past hour. Then the climax in the form of Ravi Sabran as he’d swept away with the child on his hip, his servants running along behind, trying to keep up with his impatient step. It seemed as though more had happened in one short hour on Indian soil than all the years she’d spent in England.
She thought of Sabran’s parting words: “Sans Souci.” An almost frivolous name for a house but alluring too; she would visit there as soon as possible.
Every now and then she stole a glance at Charles’s averted face, not quite fully being able to believe she was actually with him at last.
Her mood darkened as she was all of a sudden overcome with a sharp twinge of anxiety. “Who is this man I have married? Do I still love him?”
A beam of sunlight broke through the intertwined overhead branches and illuminated the scene before her.
It was a festival day, and armloads of brilliantly coloured flowers were being made into garlands for temple offerings. A young girl of almost mythical beauty, draped in a cyclamen pink sari, sat squatting in the bright dust by the side of the road, weaving garlands of marigold and tuberoses. As she worked she sang, her voice lilting and mysterious, seeming to intertwine with the movement of her deft fingers as she twisted the flowers into fragrant ropes.
Charles glanced at Sara and was overcome with the need to do something gallant. He called to stop the carriage, then he threw the girl a few rupees. She caught them deftly, then, choosing a garland of intensely perfumed white jasmine, she draped it around Sara’s neck. The girl raised her slender hands to her forehead in a joyous blessing. There was no sign in her eyes that she expected any other reward; the blessing was given freely, from the purity of her innocent heart. Charles felt it too and was moved to say, “She seems a decent little thing.”
Sara smiled, touched by his gesture. He cared for her after all, and everything would be all right.
Then, from the distance came the beating of drums, discordant and sinister, and the people hurried off the road to stare.
A procession was moving towards them, the mass transforming into men dancing as though in a trance, kicking up the yellow dust of the road, convulsing their bodies in wild almost obscene movements, their eyes wide and crazed.
They carried a bier shaded by curtains and decorated with marigolds, but when the breeze shifted and the drapery briefly parted, a corpse could be seen, frozen by rigor mortis into an almost demure sitting position, though with one shrivelled and blackened foot sticking straight out into the open air of the living.
As the procession moved closer the grotesque shrunken head could be seen, bound in a white turban hung with cheap paste rubies, jerking in time to the beat of the music and the dancing feet of his bearers, the mouth set in a grim smile, as though enjoying its final macabre journey to the funeral pyre.
Cynthia’s hand flew to her nose. Over her handkerchief her eyes showed an expression of deep horror, though Sara was struck by how quickly her own feelings of revulsion evaporated. There were no lingering feelings of sadness; the death was accepted as inevitable, and faced head-on as a natural part of life. She shuddered as she remembered the funeral of her aunt, the icy rain pouring into the muddy grave, and the despairing empty sound of the clods of earth as they fell onto the lid of the coffin.
At that moment Charles took her arm and held it close within his own. He smiled at her. “All right, are you? Not too horrible.”
“No … somehow it seems more preferable than a tightly sealed grave.”
He looked at her oddly. “Of course, but I don’t think it would be the thing for us English to follow the same course. A little undignified, don’t you think?”
She gave a small laugh, thinking he was joking, though when she examined his expression she could see he was deadly serious.
The respectable stone buildings of the town were almost left behind now, and the ramshackle small buildings and rich temples of the Indian population clung closer together, a mixture of homes and businesses, the alleyways now mere burrows, leading to a seductive mix of shops selling spices heaped high in multicoloured cones, to brothels where young girls sat on embroidered cushions in open windows, their childish forms burdened with cheap gold jewellery and bright cotton saris, their haunted eyes painted with wide black streaks of kohl in an attempt to make them more alluring to the passing trade.
Cynthia suddenly let out a shriek of horror as a holy man, almost naked except for his long matted hair hanging almost down to his feet, and smeared from head to toe in a grey ash, threw himself before the carriage to beg for alms. It was impossible not to notice his long limp penis, covered like the rest of his body with grey dust and half hidden with the cotton rag hanging from the man’s waist. It was the first man Sara had seen naked and she could barely drag her eyes away from the lower half of his body.
She gave Charles a hasty curious look, then turned away, uselessly rearranging the gloves on her lap to cover her fears. It seemed so strange that because of a ceremony performed in England over a year ago, she would now have to share this man’s bed and do whatever intimate things married people did together. She wondered how on earth she would be able to go through with it and wondered if he would insist she sleep with him in his bed that very night.
“Move on, Shakur, you fool! What do you think you’re playing at?”
It was obvious Charles was as embarrassed as she was and was hiding it with anger, though she couldn’t help thinking it would be better to laugh instead.
Shakur flicked the reins but the horses refused to budge, prolonging the discomfort of everyone.
“Forgive me, sir; this fellow wants money, then he will go away.”
Charles hurriedly threw the man a coin. “I’m sorry, ladies,” he mumbled, blushing.
The Sadu followed behind, torturing them once more with his nakedness, blessing them all fervently and often, as Lady Palmer tried to shoo him away while holding her other hand over her daughter’s eyes.
Sara now found it difficult not to laugh and was almost bent over, trying to suppress her giggles.
The shock from the sight of her first naked male body had receded almost indecently fast, and her interest was taken by fresh scenes of life as it swarmed around the barely moving carriage.
Small herds of cattle, their horns painted bright colours and interwoven with flowers, stood in caramel-coloured unhurried clumps in the middle of the road. The carriage was forced to stop as a newly born calf struggled into the world on the road before them.
The calf rose, still crumpled from the womb, the umbilical cord trailing in the dust as its mother gently nudged it to stand, a picture of placid maternal devotion in the commotion around them. Sara and Cynthia looked at each other in a rare moment of genuine connection. For both of them it was the first time they had witnessed birth.
They crawled slowly past the gates of a huge temple where crowds had gathered to wait their turn to seek an audience with the Brahmin priests, ready to pay a rupee or two for a puja, a blessing, to further their chances of success in love or luck.
These men, the highest of all the castes, were mostly plump and well-kept like the spoilt concubines of rich men. They idled on the steps of the temple, gossiping and laughing, their bodies wrapped in robes of pure white cloth, their fat shiny necks ringed by garlands of marigolds.
Lines of the crippled and deformed had taken up their positions in front of the entrance to capture the pity of the crowd as they passed. Sara reeled back with a sickening lurch to her stomach at the sight of a deformity that surely could never have been created by nature alone. A young man, his legs and arms bent in a grotesque shape, sat patiently on a wooden trolley he propelled with a stick, his beautiful saint-like head being the only feature of his body not defiled.
“For God’s sake, give him some money,” Sara gasped. Charles, too, was moved by this special horror to hastily feel in his pocket and throw the coins blindly in the direction of the boy. Sara looked back to see the other less deformed pick up the coins to place them in the boy’s faded cotton sack he wore around his neck. Even amongst the desperate they recognised the dishonour of stealing from such an unfortunate being.
They followed the seafront now, and the high grey stone walls of Fort St George, topped with the English flag flying from the battlements loomed ahead, clinging to the water’s edge and protected on the south side by a wide muddy river. They passed through the outskirts of a settlement of dense streets and warehouses, built up against the fort walls and giving the area the look of an Arabian Souk. There was something vaguely familiar about the place, and Sara broke out in a gentle smile. The memory must have been a happy one.
The population had become more diverse, and Muslim families had set up businesses alongside Chinese, Hindus, Tamils and Parsees. Veiled women and Europeans squeezed up against each other in the narrow laneways and shopped and bartered loudly in foreign tongues.
Sara heard snatches of French and Spanish as they passed, and once, as two men stood aside to let the carriage pass, she heard softly but distinctly, “Cochons Anglais!” The words were uttered with such ferocity she blanched and looked back to see one of the men bow at her in an insulting, mocking way.
“That’s Blacktown!” Lady Palmer gave a haughty toss of her head. “And most appropriately named. We try to pretend this place doesn’t exist, though I suppose it’s a necessary evil. Catholics and Muslims and God knows what else!”
Sara thought it wise not to respond by keeping her face averted, and only turned when Lady Palmer poked her on the arm with the end of her parasol and pointed to a group of pretty painted houses facing the river.
“That very vulgar house with the bright green shutters belongs to the McKenzies, an Anglo-Indian family. We don’t socialise with them.” She placed extra emphasis on ‘them’.
Sara gave Lady Palmer an enquiring look, but the woman shuddered, raising her hand at once to dispel any further questions.
“When you see them, you’ll understand. The mother and daughter are very black. Even though the father was a Scot, dead now, mercifully, the mother is Indian, and as ugly as a gnome. You may see them in the street, but it is best to ignore them if they attempt to speak to you. The girl in particular is most annoyingly present in English society, despite all efforts to discourage her.”
Sara made a mental note to be sure not to snub them if she did somehow meet the marooned family in question, while her dislike of Lady Palmer rose to new heights.
Sara scanned the scene before her with fresh interest. Each house they passed might perhaps have been the home she’d lived in as a child, though none of them provoked even a hint of recognition. The house she remembered had a wide veranda with tall white columns and stood in a lush garden. None of the houses she passed were large enough, and gardens were almost non-existent in such a crowded place. It seemed an impossible task.
They’d come at last to the high stone walls of Fort St George and stopped at the southern-most entrance. A sentry saluted and raised the boom gate to allow them to pass.
“You’ll always be safe here, my dear.” Charles acknowledged the sentry with a haughty nod. “White town is for English Christians only, and no Indians are allowed to enter except for the tradesmen and, of course, our servants.”
Sara looked behind her at the busy streets and felt a strong pang of longing. It seemed they were leaving life itself behind, and entering a kind of well-preserved tomb, dedicated to a country thousands of miles away.
Inside the fort was a tidy world of chalk roads and white timber and stone houses of varying sizes, according to the social status of the people within, and bordered with prim English flowers and well-watered lawns. They passed a pretty white church surrounded by struggling rose bushes, and low wide windows open to the outside air, though hung with thick shutters capable of deflecting a typhoon. A middle-aged parson in a flat black straw hat, about to enter the church, stopped for a moment and waved.
Lady Palmer called to him, and Sara was amused to see how quick he was to respond to her summons. After the initial greetings, Sara was introduced.
“You’ll have a new face in church this Sunday, Mr Hobson. Mrs Fitzroy, Charles’s wife.”
The little man squinted up at her through horn-rimmed spectacles.
“Welcome to our little parish, Mrs Fitzroy,” he chirped. “I think you’ll find our activities will keep you as amused as if you were back in England. We have tea with the other wives every Wednesday at three, you will be very useful in taking the bible readings with the converts Thursdays at ten, and there’s the sewing group where we make articles to sell for charity, which I’m sure you’ll be able to attend …”
Sara nodded and smiled and, despite doing her best to listen to the man, she found herself unpleasantly reminded of the suffocating rituals that made up most of her life in England. It might not be so easy to escape the stuffy air of parsons after all.
Chapter 5 (#ulink_7e4f4dff-7438-5c35-8998-488862628fad)
Despite longing to see her own home, lunch at Lady Palmer’s at least put off the inevitable moment when she and Charles would be alone, for better or worse. She sensed he was feeling the same, as he didn’t even attempt an excuse when Lady Palmer insisted they join her for lunch.
The Palmers’ white stone palace was more like a public building than a home, standing with majestic grandeur in the centre of a neatly manicured wide green lawn, and towering over the surrounding houses of lesser public officials.
A pack of excited pugs ran down the front steps to greet them and, for the first time, Sara saw signs of genuine affection spreading over the proud features of Lady Palmer as she bent to kiss their wet, snuffling noses.
Lady Palmer presided like a queen over her staff of at least one hundred servants and, even while claiming she loathed being back in Madras, it was plain being able to command such power over so many was a huge comfort to her.
A group of servants hovering at her elbow looked at each other as though longing to escape.
Sara hid a smile. While Charles sipped his tea his mind was elsewhere, till he burst out, not being able to contain his thoughts any longer, “I thought Sabran was a bit thick with the compliments towards you, Sara, my dear.” Charles mimicked Sabran’s heavily accented tones, “‘It’s not often we have such a charming addition to our barbaric shores.’” I almost laughed out loud.”
Sara squirmed in her chair. What a fool she was, so easily taken in by a bit of fake charm.
“It was a remarkable coincidence though, Charles, his grandmother having the same name as the baby. Surely you can see that?”
“He most certainly made that part up. He probably already knew the child’s name, and I believe he was flirting with you. What a cad the man is.”
Sara was silenced for a moment, then she spoke up, a little fever in her heart telling her he was being unfair.
“He’s a Frenchman after all. Perhaps he thinks it’s expected of him.”
“Well, half a Frenchman anyway; the rest of him is pure Indian! And with all it implies.” His voice was raised just a little, but enough to show how deeply he felt.
“He was being kind … taking the baby …”
Her words were wasted. Charles was listening to something Cynthia was saying about Paris, but he patted her on the arm as though it should be the end of the matter. Sara was glad they had changed the subject as she wasn’t sure she could contain her temper, though there was no escape from the persistent thoughts buzzing around in her head like a trapped fly.
I should have taken the child … I should have taken her … The old man meant me to take her …
Lady Palmer drew herself up and pursed her lips. “No one knows where Sabran gets his money, but he’s most vulgar … He bought a house that rightfully belongs only to those of English blood.”
“I believe he bought it just to irritate us.” Cynthia sniffed.
Sara roused herself at last to respond. “You’ve been to his house? Is it far from here?”
“I most certainly have not been to his house! And I wouldn’t go even if he asked me … but those who have been there say it’s terribly common, and that he has all kinds of dreadful people staying there … Indians and God knows who else.”
Sara couldn’t help herself. “Well, it is India after all.”
Cynthia pursed her lips and looked for a moment remarkably like her mother.
“Even so, he has a bad reputation. They say he keeps a group of dancing girls … to entertain him day and night.”
The girl looked so excited by the lewd possibilities, Sara laughed out loud. “Surely you exaggerate. He must sleep some time. Poor man, he must be exhausted.”
Lady Palmer rushed to defend her daughter. “My daughter does not exaggerate!”
Charles whispered an explanation for Lady Palmer’s unusual attitude.
“It is Lady Palmer’s particular concern. She believes the dancing girls are responsible for the moral breakdown amongst some of our young single men.”
Lady Palmer’s lips had shrunk into a thin line. “I most certainly do. Waving themselves about, practically naked, in front of our boys. It’s outrageous!”
Sara felt a warning nudge from Charles, but her spirit rose within her.
She laughed again, trying to make light of the situation. “Well, I suppose I’ll find all this out when we go to visit the child.”
A teacup hit a saucer with a loud crash.
Charles cleared his throat and was about to speak, when Lady Palmer uttered the words for him. “You can’t be serious, my girl. You can never visit her … ever, especially not alone.”
“But Lady Palmer, times have changed. Why, in London now it’s not so unusual for a young lady to make visits alone, or to work, and even to have her own rooms.”
“Well, in that case she most certainly isn’t a lady!” Lady Palmer was emphatic.
Sara turned to her husband for support. “Well, I’m sure Charles will accompany me, to protect me from Monsieur Sabran’s rather florid compliments.”
She smiled, with not much humour, hoping to encourage Lady Palmer in a returned smile, but the woman only snorted her disapproval.
Sara watched Charles’s averted face, but there was no reaction.
“Charles?”
“Sabran isn’t received anywhere,” he said at last. “At least not in any decent home.” He lowered his voice to a whisper.
“He keeps a woman, but, instead of being discreet about it, he flaunts her, and she’s already married … She was with Sabran today …”
Sara remembered the glimpse of the beautiful face, one not easily forgotten.
“Her husband’s a very great Maharaja, and very useful to us in the collection of taxes from the farmers in his district. So you can see how I’m placed in a difficult position. He’s insisted I help return her, even though she’s the lowest of his wives.”
“‘The lowest of his wives!’ How cruel, if she means so little to him, he should let her go.’”
“It’s a matter of honour for him, and it’s not my place to have an opinion on the matter.”
“Perhaps he was unkind to her,” Sara persisted.
“I want to tell you more about Paris, Charles …” Cynthia had moved a little closer, hoping to turn the topic back to herself.
Charles mumbled an apology then returned to Sara. “It’s none of our business. My business is to return her to her husband, and Sabran flatly refuses.”
“He must love her very much.”
“Love! What a hopeless romantic you are, darling. He could afford a hundred such women. He keeps her to annoy me! That’s the sum of it. The man is arrogant beyond belief, and it’s not clear where he gets his money … We think he has some interests in opium …”
“Opium!” Now it was Sara’s turn to drop her cup too loudly on the saucer. “But if he’s so bad, why would he bother with a stray child?”
“Well, it’s not as though he’ll ever see it … One of his servants will take care of it, and he’s as rich as Croesus, and he takes good care to see we British won’t be getting any of it.”
She felt the frustration rise once more. “Even so, I must see the child once more, just to be sure. Then I’ll have discharged my responsibility.”
He spoke slowly, as if to give more weight to his words. “Darling, you must never visit him. Things are different here, it’s a small community and people talk. A woman’s reputation is very important, even more so than in England, and remember you’re the wife of the District Magistrate. We must set an example to the natives, otherwise they’ll lose their respect for us. Anyway, he’ll have forgotten about you by now. Your promises mean nothing to a man like Sabran.”
“He doesn’t seem to like you much either.”
“He has no reason to like me. We’ve clashed often over various legal issues. He simply won’t accept English justice … fights tooth and nail to defend the indefensible. But I don’t want to talk about him. I’d much rather talk about you.” He bent to kiss her again, giving her at the same time a particularly tender glance. “But we can’t avoid seeing him sometimes, even if I wish him gone to the devil. He’s managed to get his polo team to the finals. There’s the last match of the season in a few weeks and I intend to thrash the brute.”
“He plays well then?”
“Too well. So far we haven’t managed to beat him … But this time …” Charles banged his fist down on the table, making the teacups shake.
Sara was shocked by the anger in his voice. He seemed almost obsessively determined. “Is it really so important you beat him? Really, Charles, does it matter that much?”
He answered her with a silent nod, then turned away, the conversation at an end.
Charles rose to join Cynthia on the other side of the room, and Sara’s spirits sank within her. She unconsciously pulled at the neck of her blouse as she looked around Lady Palmer’s over-furnished drawing room. The brilliant day had lost its beauty, and what she had so recently thought exciting and exotic appeared shoddy, ugly and dull.
She toyed with Charles’s gift of jasmine she had tucked at her waist so to admire it better. Already it had turned brown and hung lifelessly from her belt, its once heady fragrance now sickly and rancid.
Chapter 6 (#ulink_830b9ae3-3143-59a4-baa2-6a4d8e949aea)
Sara hated herself for her failure to like her new home, even though it was one of the largest and best built in the community, and, at her first sight of it, had to struggle to hide her dismay, though Charles spoke with unmistakable pride in his voice.
“What do you think of it? I like to see it as our own little patch of England.”
The house was an exaggerated version of a Surrey country cottage, burdened with both mock Tudor features and a prim picket fence. There was something ridiculous about it, like an Englishman Sara had met on the ship, who wore heavy tweeds despite the heat and always carried an umbrella.
A dainty path bordered by half-dead roses snaked from the veranda across a faded yellow lawn to the front fence. It was clearly her husband’s pride and joy and as he paused at the front gate he solemnly contemplated the grass, poking at the bare patches with his walking stick.
“My home,” she murmured, but even to her own ears the words seemed wistful.
The servants appeared to welcome them, laughing and generously bestowing blessings on their new mistress. She was swept towards the house while fragrant flowers were thrown in her path. Only one servant hung back, unsmiling and watchful, her eyes fixed on Sara. Even the drab brown of her servant’s sari couldn’t disguise the fact that she was lovely in a way that set her apart from the rest of the servants.
Charles seemed not to notice her beauty. Her presence seemed only to inspire him to anger. “There you are! Quick! Come here at once and meet your mistress.”
The girl crept forward and prostrated herself on the ground before them both, then slowly raised her kohl-rimmed eyes, her expression a mixture of fear and curiosity. She glanced in Charles’s direction as though asking for permission to speak. Despite her heavy gold nose-ring disguising almost half her face, it was plain she was not from South India. Her pale skin and slightly curved nose showed something of Arabic roots.
Charles gave her permission to speak.
“I am Lakshmi, memsahib.” Her huge almond-shaped eyes flashed, then were cast down once more.
“Lakshmi, what a pretty name—it means the goddess of good fortune, doesn’t it, Charles? I hope we will be good friends, Lakshmi.”
The girl gave Charles another furtive look before venturing to speak.
“Thank you, memsahib.”
“That’ll do. Wait over there.” Charles was cross again and Sara couldn’t understand why.
“Is something wrong?”
He answered her at last, speaking as though she were a small child who must be humoured. “Darling, you don’t have to be friends with her, but from now on Lakshmi will do everything for you.”
“Couldn’t it have waited a little? I would’ve liked to choose my own maid. Perhaps we won’t suit each other.”
“My sweet girl, you know you can’t turn up in your own home without a maid; the servants will despise you if you do. Anyway, it’s not for her to decide if you suit her. She’s here to do what you ask of her; that’s all there is to it.”
“I would like her to be happy, just the same.”
“As I said, her happiness is not an issue. She’s a hard worker, that’s what’s important, and trained by Lady Palmer herself. She’s been given to you as a wedding gift and you’re very lucky to have her.”
“A wedding gift? I was under the impression that slavery was illegal.”
“We do pay her, you know.” He spoke with a tinge of impatience in his voice. “Very well, as it happens, and she’s very grateful to have the position, I can assure you.”
“Then I must thank Lady Palmer when I see her,” she replied almost sweetly, though her eyes showed her resentment. “She’s very pretty.”
“Is she? I hadn’t noticed. One can never think of the Indian women as pretty … but of her type I suppose she’s attractive enough.”
Sara smiled up at him, wanting to break down the stiffness between them. “Has she a sweetheart?”
“Of course not …” he spluttered, and shook his head almost violently, as though the idea was unthinkable. “The men won’t have her … She has no family or dowry!”
“Poor girl … Is that why she seems so unhappy?”
He frowned, his patience at an end now. “Sara, my dear, you really do have an over-fanciful imagination. How can you tell if she’s happy or not without even knowing the girl?”
Sara was taken aback by the passion of his response, but at the sight of her shocked face, as soon as the servants were dismissed from the room, he hurried to console her.
“I’m sorry … Forgive me. It’s just that, after all this time, it’s a strain for us both and,” he added, taking her hand to kiss it, “I’m not used to being in the company of such a lovely and accomplished girl. I’ve forgotten how to behave.”
The gentle tone of his voice softened her a little, and she didn’t protest when he put his arms around her.
“I can’t believe you’re here at last.”
“I would have come at once if you’d sent for me.” Her tone was cool. She had to admit to having harboured a secret resentment towards him. It had been a niggling and often painful thought in the back of her mind that if he really cared for her there would’ve been no delay. In her heart she felt he should have swept her up in his arms and insisted on taking her on the ship with him, despite her aunt’s sudden illness. Though, even though she thought it, she studied his face and saw the truth of it. Despite his romantic exterior, it wasn’t his way to be impulsive.
“Well, you’re here now, and we have the rest of our lives together. Anyway, I couldn’t take the risk of you falling ill. You must trust me. We lost two of our community to the cholera this last time, one of them a young woman about your age …”
“Then you do care for me?” she asked with a smile.
“Of course I do, perhaps even more than I did before.”
He put out a hand to touch her hair. “I don’t remember you being so lovely; it’s come as quite a shock to me.”
“Have I changed so much?” She raised her face to his, while his eyes lingered on the tempting shape of her upper lip. He wondered why he’d never noticed it before.
“As I said, it’s almost as though you’re a different person. I wasn’t sure if you still loved me.” His voice was almost harsh now. “I suppose I need you to be devoted to me. Like any new husband.”
“Well, I am devoted to you.” She laughed, surprised at his intensity. “And prepared to love you, even more than I do already, if you give me half a chance.”
He studied her face as she gazed at him. It was impossible not to see how eager and sincere she was.
He nodded, satisfied at last. In truth he was a little disappointed to discover he’d married such a beautiful girl. It had never been his intention to marry for beauty. He felt a wife was expected to be a wife, not an ornament. It made him uneasy to think other men might now look at her with lustful ideas. It increased her power over him, and he hated to be at a disadvantage. He changed the subject at once, not wanting to linger on unpleasant thoughts.
“I’ve arranged for us to leave for Tanjore as soon as I can get away.”
“Tanjore?”
“South of here. you’ll like the place. It’ll give us a chance to get to know each other, away from prying eyes. One is never really alone in Madras.”
His eyes lingered on her body, taking time to appreciate her shapely form. She unconsciously crossed her arms over her breasts, at the same time experiencing a strange little flutter in her chest. It was real, after all. She really was married to this man standing before her and he had a right to look at her in that way.
“Our honeymoon … Of course, I’d almost forgotten.” She blushed and looked away.
“I don’t see why you’re so shocked.” He laughed, for the first time showing a touch of humour. “That’s what you’re here for, you know, to love, honour and obey.”
She bit her lip and stared down at her hands, wondering what to do next. Then, before she could stop herself, the words spilled out. “I will love and honour you, but I have no intention of obeying you, Charles, unless I want to, of course.”
He stared at her for a long moment as though weighing up her words and struggling with his own thoughts, then he stepped forward in a determined way and drew her to him, kissing her hard on the lips.
It was the first time they had actually kissed with any kind of intensity, and she wasn’t sure if it was pleasurable or not; his transformation from practicality to passion came as such a shock.
“I can’t wait. I can’t wait to have you to myself,” he breathed. She was aware of his beating heart as she was pressed almost violently against his chest. Then she felt the warmth of his fingers as they stole up the back of her neck and grasped at the strands of her hair, pulling her head back to be kissed once more.
She gave a little gasp. It was almost as if he was another man. Then for a blinding instant she saw a little into his soul. He kept his feelings close, and only sometimes would he allow them to be seen. This was what marriage was about; she must try to understand him, and with that understanding would come a deeper love. It was such a relief, such a relief to know, deep down, she hadn’t been wrong about him after all.
Chapter 7 (#ulink_26b05f01-8bdc-56f4-80e2-7f1bc8e4dba5)
It soon became clear that, apart from the climate, there was very little difference between the life Sara had left behind and the society she now found herself marooned in. The only difference being that the codes of behaviour were even more rigid for women than for men.
Even the regulations themselves were frozen in the earlier time of dusty Victorian rule, as antiquated as the horsehair sofa she sat upon most evenings in the drawing room of Lady Palmer’s cloying over-furnished mansion.
At yet another gathering where it was deemed essential she attend, she looked around at the assembled guests, trying to discern signs of unease in the faces of the other women. Were they too struggling with the endless rules of behaviour imposed on them? But their faces betrayed only contentment, even pride, as they fanned themselves against the insufferable heat and watched their menfolk at play.
Many of the women she knew had come from the lower middle classes of England and had once been part of the “fishing fleet” of the past years. They’d found husbands amongst either the minor civil servant community or the military and were now in a society they could never have hoped for in England. Here in Madras, even those from the most humble of backgrounds had at least a dozen servants who enabled them to live with total freedom from domestic servitude.
They were proud of their new status and couldn’t help but boast of it with, it seemed to Sara, sometimes an almost vulgar display of arrogance against the Indian natives. Her compatriots were more than happy with their position, and it was unlikely they would buck the system they had so recently found themselves a part of.
At the far end of the room a group of men were standing together, arms around each other’s shoulders and singing a faintly disreputable ditty from one of London’s faraway music halls. She tried to be indulgent as it was harmless enough, but she resented the fact that men could be silly and loud and drink too much and stumble the night away without any recriminations, while she was supposed to be restrained and corseted, as stiff and emotionless as a mummy in a tomb.
Her face was outwardly serene, but inside her head her thoughts were in turmoil as she ran through the endless list of rules an Englishwoman in India must abide by.
A lady must never be seen alone in the street without at least one servant. A lady must never appear too forward in the company of a gentleman or discuss politics with an air of knowing something about the subject. A lady must always defer to the opinion of the gentleman, even if she felt he was wrong. A lady must not interrupt a gentleman while he was speaking. And, above all, she must never be seen to be amused or interested in the company of an Indian man if she should ever meet one, no matter how high his status. She must always be aware any relations between the races must be kept strictly at arm’s length.
So far, she had broken nearly all those rules, and on the first day of her arrival in India, and had been made to pay for her unconventional behaviour with sly looks of censure and haughty glares, especially from Lady Palmer.
Sara’s head spun with it, and she experienced a familiar tightening in her throat whenever she was in Lady Palmer’s drawing room.
Card tables, occasional tables, vases of dried flowers and tall brass buckets of peacock feathers, silver picture frames, large bronze statuettes and examples of the local bird life preserved under domed glass, their brilliant plumage ragged and dusty. They jammed up against each other and competed on the walls with damp and dreary landscapes of the Scottish Highlands, and scenes of quaint English villages brought from “home”.
Sara’s own house had been adorned in much the same way when she first arrived, and Charles had confessed the furnishings were due to Lady Palmer’s influence. Within the first month, though, Sara had removed the dusty trinkets and condemned most of the heavy Victorian furniture to a storeroom. The walls were painted white and she hung curtains of a vivid turquoise blue and decorated the rooms with exquisite antiques and weavings she’d found in the marketplace for a pittance. The finished result was light and elegant and, most of all, unique, despite the objections of Charles, who declared the look a trifle bohemian. He was concerned about how Lady Palmer would react if she ever found out. But, being in the first throes of fascination with his lovely new wife, he soon adjusted to the changes, only keeping the stuffed head of a tiger in his study, and the largest of Lady Palmer’s paintings, a gloomy still life of a collection of dead animals arranged on a tartan rug after a shoot, which took pride of place above his narrow bed in the dressing room, causing Sara to emit a little shudder of horror whenever she walked past.
A servant bearing a tray of wilting cucumber sandwiches roused her to her present world. She took a bite then put it down at once; it was warm, and tasted vaguely of rancid butter. A sudden roar of coarse laughter from the other side of the room made her flinch.
She longed to be alone, but she knew Charles would be disappointed if she asked to leave before he was ready. He liked nothing better than to be at the centre of a gathering where he knew he was respected and admired. He was at home with his people and, for a clouded moment, Sara had a fear that she’d never feel the same way. But she told herself it was nonsense to be so uneasy. It had only been a few weeks, and there were bound to be difficulties at first, and with time she’d carve her own niche in this new world.
Though she was beginning to wonder what she had committed herself to.
Where was the adventure she’d so longed for? There was none in being transported across the world from one drawing room to another.
For a wild fleeting moment she wished it wasn’t taboo to be alone with a man before they married, if only for a few hours, just to discover what happened in the bedroom before a bride was bound for life.
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